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THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON 
IN ALABAMA 



THE STORY OF COAL 
AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



BY 

ETHEL ARMES 

AUTHOR OF "MIDSUMMER IN WHITTIER's COUNTRY " 




BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA 
PUBLISHED UNDER AUSPICES OF 
THE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE 
1910 



Copyright, 1910 
By Ethel Armes 



Entered at Stationers' Hall, London 

All rights reserved 



THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A. 



©CI.A256012 



TO 

MY MOTHER 
LUCY HAMILTON KERR ARMES 



CONTENTS 

Introduction 



xxv 



Chapter I — The Planting of the Seed 1 

Beginning of coal ' and iron business of Alabama. Origin of first iron 
workers. Organic relation to State. Diversified character of activities. 
First iron used imported blooms. Tradition of initial service of native 
iron ore. Indians in possession of country. Highly organized tempera- 
ment of ancient tribes. Adverse circumstances of later day confronting 
frontier settlers. Pushmataha quotes General Washington on need for 
mechanics and tools of industry among Indians. Tombigbee District 
root ground of institutions of State. Fort St. Stephens, first depot of 
iron supplies and headquarters of artisans. Biography of Benjamin 
Hawkins. His progressive attitude towards Indians. Early smiths at 
Fort Toulouse. Incidents of Bienville's old trading post. Feeble hold 
of French and Spanish. The great myth of Alabama. Picturesque 
facts and traditions of Indian origin. Naming of coal fields. Iron ore 
of Red Mountain as war paint. Ancient festivals of Valley region. 
Significant background of Birmingham District. 



Chapter II — Records of Early Growth 12 

Trading post established at St. Stephens. History of romantic fort. Old 
Spanish blockhouse serves as depot of iron supplies. Sketches of St. 
Stephens blacksmiths, Tandy Walker and John S. Glidden. Wide im- 
portance of work. First shops at Mobile. Negro blacksmith-scholar of 
Tuskaloosa. Abandonment of St. Stephens. Mt. Vernon arsenal second 
depot of iron supplies. Founding and growth of Selma. Present day 
appearance of forsaken capitals of Alabama. Site of Fort Toulouse 
headquarters of Andrew Jackson. Folklore tale of surrender of Weather- 
ford. " Old Hickory's " commander of scouts settles in brown ore region 
of Franklin County. Group of men of War of 1812 and their descendants 
associated with coal and iron records of South. Discovery of Coosa and 
Cahaba coal fields. Original ownership and interesting anecdote of 
certain properties owned by present-day corporations of Birmingham 
District. List of smiths of early Alabama. Theodore Roosevelt's word 
for the laboring man. 



Chapter III — First Furnace and First Railroad ... 27 

The Story of Old Cedar Creek furnace. Early settlement of Russells Val- 
ley. Description of old ways and means of iron making. Method of 
getting ore. Disposition of product. Pioneer furnacemen and settlers 
of Franklin County. Folklore of the region. Records of State geologists. 
Present-day appearance of furnace site. Operations of Sloss-Sheffield 
Steel and Iron Company, and Sheffield Coal and Iron Company. Indus- 



viii 



CONTENTS 



trial enterprises contemporary with Cedar Creek furnace. Progressive 
spirit of first governor of Alabama. Survey of early times and condi- 
tions. Construction of old Decatur and Tuscumbia Railroad. Sketch 
of David Hubbard. Early means of transportation. Pioneer railroads 
of State. 



Chapter IV — Early Eecords of Jefferson and Wal- 
ker Counties 40 

First settlement in Jones Valley, Origins of mining towns in Birmingham 
District. Old Hawkins Plantation site of Thomas. Folklore of Shades 
Valley. Early uses of iron ore by first settlers. Founding of Elyton. 
The pioneer prospector of Red Mountain. Old log cabin schoolhouse 
first building on property of Woodward Iron Company. Making of first 
iron out of Red Mountain ore. Last glimpse of Indians of Alabama. 
First coal operations. Story of the Hanby family. Tuomey's descrip- 
tion of diving for coal. How coal was floated down to Mobile. First 
Warrior coal mined in 1827. Speculators visit region in eighteen-forties. 
Remote and unsettled character of Walker County. Reminiscences of 
early settlers. Famous pilots of coal barges. Summary of antebellum 
operations in Walker County by Joel C. Du Bose. Sketches of lead- 
ing pioneers of coal business. Anecdote and incident of old days. 

Chapter V — Iron Making and "Coal Mining in Tuska- 
loosa County, 1830-1861 . . . 58 

Founding town of Tuskaloosa. Establishment of Roupes Valley Iron 
Works. Incoming of Daniel Hillman. Connection with early iron mak- 
ing of New Jersey, Ohio, and Kentucky. Certain properties of Tennes- 
see Company, Republic Company, Central Coal and Iron Company, and 
Birmingham Coal and Iron Company indirectly associated with Hill- 
man venture. Purchase of Roupes Valley Forge by Ninion Tannehill. 
Records of Tannehill family. Visit of Sir Charles Lyell. Moses Stroup 
acquires Tannehill Iron Works. History of Stroup family, pioneer iron- 
masters of Georgia and the Carolinas. Coal mined in Tuskaloosa in 
1831. Coming of William Goold. Character sketch of the well-known 
coal miner and prospector. 



Chapter YI — Bibb and Shelby Counties, 1820-1861 . . 70 

Pioneer forge and furnace builders. Character of operations. Exhibit of 
Bibb County blooms at Sydenham exposition. Biography of Jonathan 
Ware. Reminiscences of Camp's Bloomery. Sketch of Jonathan Newton 
Smith. Discovery of coal near Daileys Creek. " Stones on fire ! " Origin 
of one of Galloway Coal Company's mines. Story of Old Uncle Joe. 
Description of Brighthope furnace. "There 's enough ore around here 
to run a hundred furnaces a hundred years ! " Work of William P. 
Browne and Robert Thomas. Present-day appearance of Brighthope 
ruins. Horace Ware, "Chief of the early iron-masters." Early records 
of Shelby Iron Works. Facts and figures of blast furnace practice in 
eighteen-forties. Construction of Shelby Rolling Mill. 

Chapter VII — Pioneer Iron Making in Northeastern 
Alabama, 1830-1861, and First State Geological 
Survey . 82 

Nine iron works in Talladega County. Judge Miller's reminiscences. Maria 
forge and foundry established by Dr. Moore. Early record of some of 
Alabama Consolidated Coal and Iron Company properties. Purchase of 



CONTENTS ix 

Maria by Riddle Brothers. Minute description of plant by Walter D. 
Riddle. Erection of Rob Roy and Eagle forges. Blast furnace on Choc- 
olocco Creek. Operations in Calhoun County. History of Cane Creek 
iron works. Judge Randolph's account of early iron making. Getting 
over Waxahatchee Shoals. J. H. Weatherly's recollections. First trag- 
edy of the mines of Alabama. Record of Hale and Murdock furnace in 
Lamar County. Biographies of Abraham Murdock and of Harrison 
Hale. Association with early industrial history of Mississippi. Sum 
total of antebellum operations. Main service as forerunner of future 
development. Pig iron prices from 1849 to 1861. Appointment of 
first State geologist. University of Alabama supplies funds. Biography 
of Michael Tuomey. Association with other States. Results of first re- 
port. " Alabama may possibly have another industrial future besides 
growing cotton." 



Chapter VIII — Early Railroad Enterprises .... 104 

Beginning of the South and North Railroad. Conditions in Alabama. 
Total railroad mileage of State in 1852, one hundred and sixty-five 
miles. Causes for lack of enterprise. " Macadamized roads less liable to 
accidents." Advent of Frank Gilmer. Conception of railroad across 
Red Mountain. Assistance rendered by Governor Moore. Sketch of 
Luke Pryor. Colonel Sloss' early years. Appropriation granted for 
reconnaissance. Appointment of John T. Milner as chief engineer. 
Young Milner's thirty-mile ride. Interesting points of his career. The 
great chance of his life. First view of Jones Valley. Synopsis of Mil- 
ner's report. How the legislature received it. "The mineral region is so 
poor even a buzzard would starve to death." George S. Houston lends 
helping hand. "I was a gone up man," says Milner. The sensation 
of the day. 



Chapter IX — Internal Conditions of State and Out- 
break op War 121 

Struggles of the South and North Railroad. Alabama more interested in 
States' rights than in railroads. Cotton alone was " gentlemen's trade." 
Isolated condition of iron-masters. Facts are stubborn things. The State 
pronounced indubitably weak in industrial affairs. Gathering of the 
thunder heads. Civil War breaks out. Coal and iron business steps to 
the front. Josiah Gorgas appointed chief of ordnance of Confederacy. 
Career of General Gorgas. His command of Old Mount Vernon Arsenal. 
Marriage to daughter of Governor Gayle. Military facts of South. Bird's- 
eye view of ordnance affairs. Limitations of Confederate States. Tac- 
tics of the master-soldier. Steps in making of ordnance department. 
Organization of Confederate Nitre and Mining Bureau. Stimulation of 
coal and iron production. J. W. Mallet detailed at central laboratory. 
How the greatest department of the Confederacy was created "out of 
nothing." Testimonials of colleagues of GenerarGorgas. A great mili- 
tary feat. 



Chapter X — Confederate Arsenal and Naval Foundry 134 

Arsenal transferred from Mt. Vernon to Selma. Most advantageous point 
in Confederacy for manufacturing purposes. Description of Arsenal. 
Summary of auxiliary works. Confederate army officers stationed at 
Selma. Career of Major J. C. Compton. How John Veitch came to the 
arsenal. Major Thomas Peters and Matthew Thomas Smith report for 
duty. Milton H. Smith handles transportation of Confederate troops 
with masterly hand. Review of young Smith's work. Establishment 



X 



CONTENTS 



of great naval foundry. Confederate naval officers in charge. George 
Peacock engaged by Commander Catesby ap R. Jones as superintendent. 
Achievements of the English foundryman. Early records of pipe busi- 
ness of United States. Churchill and Company's iron works at Colum- 
biana. Shelby County. How the great guns were cast at the foundry. 
Making of the flagship Tennessee. Contemporary workshops and 
armories. Auxiliary works in Montgomery. Richard Fell's record. 
Christian F. Enslen in the ranks. Reconstruction of quartermaster's 
department by John Mason Martin. 



Chapter XI — Coal Mining in Civil War Period . . . 149 

Counties supplying coal to Confederate Government works. Captain John 
M. Huey agent at Selma. Cahaba field site of first underground mining. 
List of mines in operation during war. Important discoveries traced 
to old "bomb proofs." Work in Dailey Creek Basin. Early records of 
Piper and Coleanor. "Graveyards mark -the Thompson Mines." Work 
of William Goold. Entrance of Joseph Squire. A remarkable biography. 
Coal discovered in Kansas and Nebraska by Joseph Squire and first 
mines opened there in eighteen-fifties. Mr. Squire's account of Old 
Montevallo mines. " It was not I who brought the capital into Alabama ! 
I left that to Aldrich and DeBardeleben." Opening of Helena Coal 
mines for Red Mountain [Oxmoor] Company. Origin of various mines 
owned to-day by Tennessee Company, Little Cahaba Coal Company, 
Blocton-Cahaba Coal Company and others. . . 



Chapter XII — Iron Making in War Period 157 

Summary of iron making counties. Miraculous growth of industrial plants 
all over State. Hale and Murdock Furnace records of Lamar County 
continued. Enterprises in Tuskaloosa County. Improvements made at 
Old Tannehill. Thomas Hennington Owen builds forge on Roupes 
Creek. Present-day appearance of Tannehill ruins and surrounding 
country. Records of Jefferson County. Operation of Oxmoor furnaces. 
Introduction of Daniel Pratt. Establishment of Mt. Pinson Iron Works 
and Irondale plant. Biographical sketch of W. S. McElwain. His asso- 
ciation with iron making in Mississippi. A return to Oxmoor. Heroism 
of old Moses Stroup. Bibb County operations. Construction of Brier- 
field furnace. Biographical sketch of Caswell Campbell Huckabee. 
Reminiscences of S. G. Wilson. Introduction of Alexander Knowles 
Shepard. Incident of Tom L. Johnson's boyhood. Purchase of Colonel 
Huckabee's plant by Confederate Government. Estimate of Brierfield 
iron in George Peacock's report. S. G. Wilson builds forge on Six Mile 
Creek. Introduction of Giles Edwards. Association with early iron 
making in Wales, Pennsylvania, and in Tennessee. The most important 
event in the life of "Captain" Bill Jones of Carnegie Company. Recon- 
struction of Shelby plant by Edwards. Mention of Hamilton T. Beggs. 

Chapter XIII — Iron Making in War Period (continued) 

The Fall of Selma 178 

Work in Talladega, Calhoun, and Cherokee counties. Erection of Salt 
Creek Iron Works. Samuel Clabaugh manager of enterprise. Oxford 
furnace and Janney furnace built in Calhoun County. Judge Randolph's 
account of Oxford Iron Company. Part taken by old Southern Rail- 
road. Anecdotes of the war. Destruction of plants in Rousseau's 
raid. Jackson County operations. Records of Cherokee County furnaces. 
Construction of Cornwall furnace. Entrance of James Noble and his 
sons into Southern field. Biographical sketch of Mr. Noble. His early 



CONTENTS 



xi 



association with mining enterprises in England and in the United States. 
First locomotive built south of Virginia at Noble Foundry. General 
survey and summing up of all county records during Civil War. List 
of plants in operation. Estimate of Alabama's share of iron making 
during Confederacy. Selma the main objective point to the enemy. 
"Defend Selma at all costs." Description of fortifications. Formidable 
style. Physical conditions in Alabama in last days of war. Advance 
of the enemy. Forrest's attempts to ward off attack from Selma. April 
2, 1865. Disposition of Confederate forces. No men to man the guns. 
"Into the works or into the river!" The enemy before the works. 
Gun firing. Forrest's tactics versus Wilson's. One of greatest cavalry 
feats on record in Union Army. Fight to the death. 



Chapter XIV — Resurrection of the Iron Works 1866- 

1870 195 

Irondale furnace in Jefferson County first plant to operate after Civil War. 
Patriotism of John T. Milner. Necessity for diversified industries driven 
home at last. W. S. McElwain and H. D. Merrill reconstruct Cahaba 
iron works. Detailed description of plant. Anecdote of "Boss" Mc- 
Elwain and little Dave Hanby. Coming of James Thomas of Pennsyl- 
vania. Abandonment of property. Present-day appearance of Iron- 
dale furnace site. Mary Gordon Duffee's experience in Shades Valley. 
Vision of old Oxmoor. Plan for reconstruction of furnaces. Daniel 
S. Troy strong advocate for iron business. Biographical sketch of 
Colonel Troy. Main events in Bibb County. Brierfield plant rebuilt. 
Organization of Canebrake Company. General Josiah Gorgas elected gen- 
eral manager. Technical description of Bibb furnaces. General Gorgas 
withdraws from iron world to take up the cause of education in the 
South. He succeeds Bishop Quintard as vice chancellor of University 
of the South. Last days of the chief of ordnance of the Confederacy. 
A return to Jones Valley. Anecdotes of the late eighteen-sixties. Early 
enthusiasts of Jones Valley: Baylis Grace, Major Peters, and John T. 
Milner. Daniel Hillman, Jr., visits region. Notes on early iron trade 
of Kentucky and Tennessee. Association of Birmingham Coal and Iron 
Company, and Republic Iron and Steel Company with old times. David 
Thomas, pioneer of anthracite iron trade in America, invests in Ala- 
bama mineral lands. First step in formation of Pioneer Mining and 
Manufacturing Company, nucleus of Alabama holdings of Republic Iron 
and Steel Company. Captain Danner's reminiscences of early coal trade. 



Chapter XV — The Founding of a Great Workshop 

Town, 1869-1872 215 

Events of South and North Railroad. " On to Nashville ! " Frank Gilmer 
again at the front. Carpet Bag legislature in control. Submersion of 
State enterprises. Crisis in railroad history. Construction work on South 
and North begun. "Build that road cheap." John T. Milner's vision 
of a city in Jones Valley. Options taken up. Agreement with John C. 
Stanton, president of Alabama and Chattanooga Railroad. Treachery 
of Stanton. Baylis Grace brings news. A great game afoot, "but the 
end is not yet," says Colonel Milner. Suspense of the moment. Josiah 
Morris takes up options for site of Milner's city. Organization of Elyton 
Land Company; articles of incorporation; election of James R. Powell 
as president. Naming of the new town. Biographical sketch of Colonel 
Powell. "His nose told on him . . .he'd fight a legion of devils." 
Days of the pony express in Alabama. Pioneer transportation methods. 
Preliminaries for laying out of Elyton Land Company's city. Remi- 
niscences of Henry W. Milner. Colonel Powell's enterprise. Captain 



xii 



CONTENTS 



Charles Linn one of pioneer investors. First bank established. " Linn's 
Folly." Association of Tennessee Company property with old sea cap- 
tain's ventures. Major Willis Milner appointed officer in Elyton Land 
Company. Giles Edwards passes through Jones Valley. The city in the 
corn fields. How " the old co'thouse " was wrested from Elyton. Sketch 
of Robert H. Henley, first mayor of city. Colonel Powell's startling 
methods. Building of the Old Relay House. Introduction of B. F. 
Roden, R. H. Pearson, and Frank P. O'Brien. 



Chapter XVI — Reconstruction" of Oxmoor and Ad- 
vent of Louisville and Nashville Railroad into 
Alabama 1872-1873 238 

Controlling interest in Red Mountain Iron and Coal Company acquired by 
Daniel Pratt and Henry F. DeBardeleben. Judge H. D. Clayton elected 
president. Name of company changed to Eureka Mining Company. 
Last venture of Daniel Pratt. Young DeBardeleben comes on the field. 
Early history of the " King of the southern iron world." Joseph Squire's 
reminiscences. Oxmoor furnaces at length rebuilt. Dramatic episodes 
in railroad history. Another crisis in affairs of the South and North. 
The Sage-Stevenson-Stanton conspiracy. Defeat of Frank Gilmer. 
Albert Fink saves the day. Details of the Sloss proposition. Question of 
interstate traffic before Louisville and Nashville officials. M. H. Smith's 
recollections. Railroad system needed Southern outlet. Arguments 
for and against extension policy. John T. Milner converts Albert Fink. 
Dramatic scenes in the blue parlor. Explosion of Sam Tate's bomb. 
President Newcomb adjourns meeting sine die. Scrap between Tate 
and Newcomb. Terms of compromise. Construction work resumed on 
South and North. Introduction of Colonel Alfred S. Rives, Frank W. 
Wadsworth, J. F. B. Jackson, Bartley Boyle, St. Kevin St. Michael 
Cunningham, and James Cozby Long. Apparent failure of extension 
policy. Summary of coal mines operating in 1873. Failure of Irondale 
and panic of '73. Cholera plague in Jones Valley. Fall of Birmingham. 



Chapter XVII — Life Saving Measures 1873-1878 . . 255 

Eureka Mining and Transportation Company of Alabama organized. 
Exceptional rights and privileges granted by State. _ Colonel Troy 
elected president. Oxmoor furnaces go into blast again. Enterprise 
of Levin S. Goodrich. "The little town of Birmingham was a grave- 
yard." Biographical sketch of Mr. Goodrich. "The fools in Alabama 
are shipping ferruginous sandstone and calling it iron ore!" Judge 
Mudd operates Oxmoor plant. John T. Milner calls the men of Birm- 
ingham together. Association formed to make pig iron with coke. 
Details of organization of Cooperative Experimental Company. Wil- 
liam Goold prospects in Warrior field. Discovery and first use of famous 
Pratt seam. First coke pig iron made in Alabama. Sensation of the 
district. Louisville and Cincinnati interests assume control. James 
Thomas appointed manager. Oxmoor plant remodeled. Sketch of 
pioneer furnaceman, James Shannon. Accomplishment of steady and 
successful reduction of Red Mountain ores. Reestablishment of Geo- 
logical Survey in 1873. University of Alabama again at the lead in this 
matter. Dr. Eugene A. Smith appointed State Geologist. Inadequate 
appropriation by State. Main results of Dr. Smith's great work. 

Chapter XVIII— Birmingham Militant 1876-1880 . . 266 

Crisis in coal business. Troubles behind the scenes of Eureka company. 
Incoming of Truman H. Aldrich, first of the big pioneer coal operators 
of Alabama. Review of his career. Interesting points in Aldrich 



CONTENTS 



xiii 



family history. Antebellum conditions as depicted by John T. Milner. 
Resume of Montevallo history. An unprecedented act: digging coal 
in midsummer. Succession of coal seams in Warrior field ascertained. 
On a still hunt for coking coal. Extent and full value of Pratt seam 
demonstrated by Aldrich. Acquisition of coal lands. Combination of 
Sloss, DeBardeleben, and Aldrich. Pratt Coal and Coke Company 
first large coal company of Alabama launched. Pratt mines opened. 
"The sound of the hammer and the saw is heard again in Birmingham." 
Gathering of forces for leadership. Foundations for city of Birmingham 
laid on cheap coal. Success of Pratt mines. Start of industrial develop- 
ment. Points of policy affecting future generations settled by pioneers. 
Operation of mines limited to the individual. Mileage and freight rates 
fixed. Encouraging conditions of Elyton Land company. Recollec- 
tions of Captain A. C. Danner. Birmingham becomes center of in- 
dustrial life of State. Policy of M. H. Smith, president of Louisville 
and Nashville railroad. His durable and splendid public work. 



Chapter XIX — A Chapter oe Progress 1880-1886 . . 283 

Colonel DeBardeleben starts diversified industries in Birmingham. Es- 
tablishment of rolling mills now owned by Republic Iron and Steel 
Company. First blast furnace of city of Birmingham now owned by 
Tennessee Company. Biographical sketch of Kentucky iron-master, 
T. T. Hillman. Formation of Alice Furnace Company. Colonel Sloss 
resigns from management of Oxmoor. "Man, why don't you build 
you a furnace of your own?" says DeBardeleben. Organization of 
Sloss Furnace Company, parent stock of Sloss-Sheffield Company. 
Introduction of Harry Hargreaves. First Whitwell hot-blast stove 
in Alabama installed in old Sloss furnaces. First million-dollar deal 
of Alabama coal and iron trade. Colonel Enoch Ensley comes to town. 
" Give me something in the way of a coal mine that can knock the Ten- 
nessee Company into a cocked hat ! " says he. DeBardeleben gives 
him Pratt. The Memphis clan takes hold. Sketch of Colonel Ensley's 
life. Pratt Coal and Iron Company organized. Introduction of Llewellyn 
Johns, Jones G. Moore, Fred M. Jackson, and John B. McClary. Record 
made in pig iron. Death of Major Peters. Formation of Cahaba Coal 
Mining Company. Further achievements of T. H. Aldrich. Build- 
ing up a coal mining world. Association of Colonel Cornelius Cadle 
with Cahaba Company. Opening up Blocton and Dudley. Export Coal 
Company and Excelsior Coal Mine Company formed by Aldrich. First 
coal exported from State to West Indies in 1889-90. Founding of 
Williamson Iron Company. Sketch of C. P. Williamson. Woodward 
Iron Company's furnace goes into blast. Introduction of J. H. McCune. 
Competent and successful organization built up by Woodward brothers. 
Robert P. Porter's comments on Birmingham District in 1883. En- 
trance of William T. Underwood. Movements of Colonel DeBardeleben. 
Organization of Mary Pratt Furnace Company. Wider market created 
for Birmingham Iron. Birmingham Mineral Railroad begun. Develop- 
ment work inaugurated by Mr. Underwood. 



Chapter XX — The Northeastern Counties 1870- 

1890 309 

Iron-making ventures after the war. Summary of Calhoun County opera- 
tions. Iron men and United States Army officers in the lead. Beginning 
of Anniston. Resume" of Samuel Noble's career. View from Oxford 
Furnace ruins. "If ever I am able to build a town this is the spot I 
will choose." Handicaps ahead. Acquisition of Lloyd and Maddox 
properties. Raising capital. General Daniel Tyler visits region. Organ- 



xiv 



CONTENTS 



ization of Woodstock Iron Company. Description of first two furnaces. 
Successful operation under Noble and Tyler regime. Incorporation 
of town of Anniston. Transfer of Noble manufacturing interests from 
Georgia to Alabama. Assistance rendered by General Tyler. Formation 
of Clifton Iron Company. Purchase of Alabama Furnace Company. 
Erection of first coke furnaces of Calhoun County. Diversified indus- 
tries inaugurated. Biography of John E. Ware. Liberal policy of 
Woodstock Company. Iron making in Cherokee County. Organiza- 
tion of Tecumseh Iron Company. Biographical sketches of General 
Williard Warner and N. W. Trimble. Work of General Burke. Stone- 
wall Iron Company formed. Career of John S. Moragne. Events in 
Etowah County. Colonel Robert Kyle plants diversified industries in 
this section. Entrance of J. M. Elliott, Sr. Reorganization of Round 
Mountain Iron Works. Achievements of J. M. Elliot, Jr. Upbuilding 
of Gadsden and Attalla. Tributes to Samuel Noble. Death of the 
great iron-master. Influence of his personality. Reconstruction work 
in Bibb County. Four United States senators assume control of old 
Bibb Furnace. Entrance of Thomas Jefferson Peters. Organization of 
Brierfield Coal and Iron Company. Sketch of Frank Fitch. Cahaba 
Coal Field a wilderness in early eighties. John R. McLean of Cincin- 
natti interested in mineral region. Discovery of coal seams of Har- 
grove, Piper, and Cane Creek mines. Major Peters' plan of reconstruc- 
tion. A million dollars invested in improvements. Causes of failure 
of company. Formation of Alabama Iron and Steel Company. Death 
of Major Peters. Sketch of George Frederick Peter. Outlook in Shelby 
County. Resume 1 of Horace Ware's achievements. Pioneer work in 
Texas. 



Chapter XXI — The Great Boom of Birmingham 

1886-1887 330 

Colonel DeBardeleben assembles new forces. "His siren tongue lures 
many a man upon the rocks of Alabama." David Roberts takes a look 
at Birmingham District. Biographical sketch of Mr. Roberts. Incor- 
poration of DeBardeleben Coal and Iron Company. Founding of 
Bessemer. Sensation of the day. " I am the eagle." Industrial enter- 
prises of early eighteen-eighties. Entrance of William P. Pinckard. 
Review of Mr. Pinckard's pioneer work and present-day operations. 
Introduction of Major R. H. Elliott. John Dowling's career. First 
step in modern blast furnace practice. " Alice " goes into eclipse. " King 
David " at the lead. General survey of mineral district. Contemporary 
events. Colonel DeBardeleben's picturesque methods. Rise of Bir- 
mingham. Incorporators of first banks. List of pioneer land companies. 
Formation of House of Milner and Kettig. Sketch of William H. Kettig. 
Influence of DeBardeleben Coal and Iron Company. DeBardeleben 
plays him the tune of the chief. Coming of the great Boom. Caldwell's 
vivid account. Jefferson County lifted from rank of pauper. Impetus 
given to State. Birmingham introduced to the world. Men of the Old 
Guard. 



Chapter XXII — More Big Business 1886. Eecords of 
Sloss Iron and Steel Company and Pioneer Min- 
ing and Manufacturing Company 347 

Option on property of Sloss Furnace Company secured by John W. John- 
ston and Joseph Forney Johnston. John C. Maben raises three millions 
on Wall Street in one day. Option taken up. Colonel Sloss retires. 
Brief resume* of his achievements. Organization of Sloss Iron and Steel 



CONTENTS 



xv 



Company. J. F. Johnston elected first president. Sketch of the senator. 
He resigns from coal and iron business to go into politics. Thomas 
Seddon elected president of Sloss Company. Biographical sketch of 
Mr. Seddon. "The company spent five hundred thousand dollars edu- 
cating me ! " How young James W. McQueen stepped into the ranks 
of the Sloss Company. Export trade to foreign countries inaugurated. 
Sol Haas succeeds to presidency. Acquisition of Sheffield properties. 
Affairs of Pioneer Mining and Manufacturing Company. Interest of 
Samuel Thomas. Old Hawkins plantation. Building of first furnace. 
Entrance of F. B. Keiser. Founding of Thomas. Odd geological con- 
struction on pioneer property. John H. Adams appointed superin- 
tendent of mines. Biographical sketch of Mr. Adams. Purchase of 
company's properties by Republic Iron and Steel Company in 1899. 
Rolling mills acquired. W. H. Hassinger elected vice-president and 
district manager. J. H. Adams resigns to captain Sayre Mining and 
Manufacturing Company. W. H. Hassinger enters Southern Steel Com- 
pany. Report of President Thompson, 1901. Present Day Management. 
Entrance of W. A. Green. 



Chapter XXIII — Advent of Tennessee Company into 
Alabama (1886) and its Early Trials and Tribu- 
lations 360 

How it all came about. Feuds behind the scenes. Tennesseean versus 
Tennesseean. Pratt Coal and Iron Company conveyed to Tennessee 
Company. Resume of early history of celebrated company. Its origin 
in Cumberland Mountains. Discovery of coal on plateau. Role played 
by Lawyer Bilbo of Nashville. New York capitalists invest in property. 
Sewanee Mining Company incorporated. Construction of railroad "up 
to the clouds." First coal shipped 1856. Thousands of acres of moun- 
tain land donated to University of South by Tennessee Company. New 
charter obtained 1860 and name changed to Tennessee Coal and Railroad 
Company. Act of incorporation. Amendments to charter. Hard 
times ahead. War breaks out. Operations during Civil War. Legal 
tangles of company begin. Arthur St. Clair Colyar takes hold of the 
business. Young Alfred M. Shook gets his first job. How the company 
was floated on air. Services of A. T. Duncan and J. C. Warner enlisted. 
Reorganization takes place. Business men of Nashville step into the 
field. Colonel Shook's gallant rescue of Kate. Struggles of early days. 
Contract to work convicts made with State of Tennessee. More trouble. 
Colonel Colyar predicts great days ahead. Messrs. Shook and Warner 
learn how to build coke ovens and blast furnaces. Construction of the 
Fiery Gizzard. Visit of James Bowron, Sr., to the Tennessee Mountains. 
Start of Southern States Coal, Iron, and Land Company, Ltd. Descrip- 
tion of Sequatchie Valley. Control of Tennessee Company passes into 
new hands. Sketch of William Morrow. Organization of Sewanee 
Furnace Company. Young George B. McCormack enters service of 
company. Summary of operations in early eighteen-eighties. Associa- 
tion of Thomas O'Connor and William H. Cherry with company. John 
H. Inman acquires T. C. I. stock. Enoch Ensley is left out of big deal 
and gets coal mine in Alabama. Nat Baxter, Jr., of Nashville appointed 
to official position. Trade with Southern States Coal, Iron, and Land 
Company effected. Interesting record of the Bowron family. Thomas 
Whitwell's connection. John Bull in the Southern iron business. Grad- 
ual progress of consolidated company. Tennessee Company begins to 
attract attention of New York Stock Exchange. Wall Street game 
commencers. Influence of George B. McCormack. The march to 
Alabama. 



xvi 



CONTENTS 



Chapter XXIV — A Series of Lively Incidents in the 

Birmingham and Sheffield Districts 1887 .... 394 

Founding of the city of Ensley by Colonel Ensley. Records of Ensley 
Land Company. Sensational first sale. End of town boom. Colonel 
Shook introduces an accounting system at Pratt mines. "The fatal 
monkey wrench." Llewellyn Johns resigns. A young Pennsylvania 
Scotch engineer is recommended. Biographical sketch of Erskine 
Ramsay. Association of Erskine and Ramsay families with early 
coal history of Scotland and the United States. Specific details of 
daily life and work of a boy in the mining world of Pennsylvania. 
First engineering corps of Tennessee Company organized by young 
Ramsay. Improvements inaugurated by him. Introduction of coal 
washers, revolving dumps, and skip-cars. Meeting of International 
Association of Metallurgists and Mineralogists in Birmingham. En- 
trance of James Henderson. First steel-making experiment of Ala- 
bama. Sketch of Colonel J. W. Bush. Results of interesting experi- 
ment by Henderson Company. Erection of "The Big Four" at Ensley. 
Resignation of Colonel Ensley from presidency of T. C. I. Pioneer 
work of Walter Moore. Organization of Lady Ensley Coal, Iron, and 
Railroad Company. Moore and Ensley open up Sheffield District. Con- 
nection of certain properties of Pratt Consolidated Coal Company and 
Sloss-Sheffield Steel and Iron Company with operations of Moore and 
Ensley. Development of Tennessee Valley counties. Beginning of 
town of Sheffield. Biographical sketch of Alfred H. Moses. The Shef- 
field Land, Iron, and Coal Company formed. Ways and means of build- 
ing up the town. Alabama and Tennessee Iron and Coal Company 
concentrates in Colbert County. Horace Ware's predictions for Sheffield. 
William Garrott Brown's account of boom days. Consolidation of 
Sheffield and Birmingham Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company. Group 
of present-day promoters. Town of Florence awakes from long sleep. 
Organization of the Florence Land, Mining, and Manufacturing Com- 
pany. Sketch of William B. Wood. Formation of Wood Furnace 
Company. John M. Norton's work. Activity of North Alabama Fur- 
nace, Foundry, and Land Company. Resurrection of Decatur. How 
Andrew Calhoun Frey "started the town going." Summary of im- 
portant industries located at Decatur. 



Chapter XXV — The March of the T. C. I. 1888- 

1895 420 

Majority control of Tennessee Company acquired by new hands on Wall 
Street. Election of ex-governor J. C. Browne of Tennessee to presidency. 
Senator T. C. Piatt of New York on governing Board. Company pro- 
nounced "a real competitor of Pennsylvania." Senator Piatt succeeds 
Browne as president. Old regime of company returns to power. Nat 
Baxter, Jr., again becomes president. The biggest trade in Tennessee 
Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company's history. Acquisition of the great 
DeBardeleben Coal and Iron Company and Cahaba Coal Mining Com- 
pany. Colonel DeBardeleben's version of the long and the short of 
it. New holdings of Tennessee Company. New board of officers. Panic 
of '93. Truman Aldrich steps into the breach. DeBardeleben takes 
his first and last plunge into Wall Street. Resignation of Alabama 
officers. T. H. Aldrich nominated to Congress. Introduction of William 
Battle Phillips, Albert Edward Barton, J. Warner Shook, Benjamin 
Talbot, Paschal Shook. Anecdote of Mr. Baxter in New York. Playing 
tunes on pig iron warrants. "Tiding over" a crisis. Life line held out 
to company. First making on large commercial scale of basic pig iron 
by George B. McCormack. Turning point in industrial history of Ala- 
bama. Character of Mr. McCormack's work as general manager of 



CONTENTS xvii 

T. C. L A. E. Barton's experiments. Lack of capital available for new 
enterprises. Process employed. Value of coal and iron lands in State 
trebled. Steel making era ushered in. 

Chapter XXVI — Affairs of Birmingham District 
1890-1909. Birmingham Coal and Iron Company. 
Dimmick Pipe Company. Southern Iron and Steel 
Company. Sloss-Sheffield Steel and Iron Com- 
pany 436 

Organization of Tutwiler Coal, Coke, and Iron Company. Foundation of 
Birmingham Coal and Iron Company. Development work inaugurated 
by Major Tutwiler, Morris Adler, and E. L. Adler. Trade with the 
Birmingham Coal and Iron Company. Career of Edward M. Tutwiler. 
Construction of Georgia Pacific Railroad. Purchase of Coalburg prop- 
erties from John T. Milner. Retirement of Colonel Milner. Sloss 
Company acquires Coalburg. How Major Tutwiler managed strikes. 
Formation of Dimmick Pipe Company. Biographical sketch of J. K. 
Dimmick, "the Dean of the Cast Iron Pipe Business." "How destiny 
hung on a ferryboat ride." Biographical sketch of Fred Dimmick, 
president of Dimmick Pipe Company. Organization of Alabama Steel 
and Wire Company, 1898. Growth of company. Acquisition of Under- 
wood properties in Blount and Etowah counties. Merger with Lacey- 
Buek Iron Company (1906). Former officers and directors of Southern 
Steel Company. Backward glance into records of Lacey-Buek Company. 
Biographical sketch of C. E. Buek. Unwise policy of consolidated com- 
pany brings it into hands of receiver. Extraordinary resurrection of 
bankrupt concern. Capital and legal genius applied to bring company 
to life. Personnel of committee on reorganization. James T. Woodward, 
president Hanover National Bank, R. B. Van Cortlandt, W. W. Miller, 
and Cornelius Vanderbilt among strong New York group. Plan of reor- 
ganization. Chairman of Board of Trustees elected president of Southern 
Iron and Steel Company. Officers of new management. Biographical 
sketch of W. P. G. Harding. Review of W. H. Hassinger's career. Sketch 
of James E. Strong. Capitalization of new company. Location of prop- 
erties in three States. Formation of Sloss-Sheffield Steel and Iron 
Company. Resume of its history. Truman H. Aldrich enters service 
of company. John Campbell Maben of Virginia elected president in 
1902. Connection of Maben family with the colonial iron-master, Lieu- 
tenant-Governor Spotswood. Appointment of John Shannon as general 
superintendent of blast furnaces. Jones G. Moore made manager of 
mines. Sketch of vice-president J. W. McQueen. Interesting associa- 
tion of McQueen family with old Scottish Chiefs. 

Chapter XXYII — Present Day Affairs of Birming- 
ham District (continued) . History of the T. C. I. 
(continued). Organization of Alabama Consoli- 
dated Coal and Iron Company 461 

Building of First Steel Mill. Mission of Paschal Shook to steel making 
centers. Construction of open-hearth furnaces recommended. Forma- 
tion of Alabama Steel and Shipbuilding Company. General Rufus N. 
Rhodes elected on board of directors. First cast of steel made Thanks- 
giving Day, 1899. Bulls and bears again on the rampage over T. C. I. 
Stock. Resignation of Nat Baxter, Jr. Don H. Bacon of Minnesota 
elected president. Personnel of new directorate of T. C. I. Record of 
Mr. Bacon's service in northwest. Summary of his work in Birming- 
ham. His appointment of Edwin Ball as manager of department of 



xviii CONTENTS 

ore mines and quarries. Interesting career of Mr. Ball. Mining ex- 
periences in Lake Superior country. Description of red ore mines of 
Tennessee Company. General plan of reconstruction. Mr. Ball places 
mines on up-to-date level. Introduction of modern machinery. Incor- 
poration of Alabama Consolidated Coal and Iron Company. Men 
associated in enterprise. Properties taken over. Pioneer builders and 
past associations. Biographical sketch of T. G. Bush. Affairs of 
historic old Shelby Iron Company. President Bush's connection with 
Clifton Iron Company. Calhoun and Talladega County interests. Back- 
ward glance over traveled roads. Introduction of Fred M. Jackson. 
Sketch of Standard Coal Company. Description of Alabama Consoli- 
dated holdings. Colonel Bush resigns presidency. Review of first 
administration. Spectacular career of Joseph H. Hoadley. Formation 
of International Power Company. A practical iron man assumes man- 
agement of company. Guy R. Johnson enters Alabama field. Brief 
review of Mr. Johnson's work in Virginia, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, 
Ohio, and Illinois. Administration of his Alabama Company. 

Chapter XXVIII — The Making of Walker County. 
Pratt Consolidated Coal Company, Galloway Coal 
Company, Corona Coal Company, Empire Coal 
Company and Others 488 

Development of great coal county. Organization in 1904 of Pratt Consoli- 
dated Coal Company, largest commercial coal company in Southern 
States. Strong men of Birmingham District its founders. Review of 
career of T. T. Hiliman, first president of company. Historic association 
of Hiliman family with pioneer coal and iron business of South. For- 
mation of Pratt Coal Company, parent stock of Pratt Consolidated. 
Introduction of H. E. McCormack. Skill, foresight, and judgment shown 
in foundation building. Evolution of a coal company. Erskine Ramsay 
elected vice-president and chief engineer. Activities of Hiliman, Ramsay, 
and the McCormack Brothers. M. H. Smith extends Louisville and Nash- 
ville track into Pratt Company properties. Development of new section 
of Warrior field. Significant event in coal records of State; five coal 
seams worked simultaneously by Pratt Company. Erskine Ramsay's 
"pet." Description of Banner mine. Outline of big proportions con- 
ceived for Pratt Coal Company. Nunley Ridge Coal Company and 
Walker County concerns considered for consolidation. G. B. McCormack 
succeeds to presidency. Growth of the Pratt Consolidated. Formation 
of Galloway Coal Company. Biographical sketches of Colonel Robert 
Galloway, Cyrus Garnsey, Jr., John R. Pill. Organization of Yolande 
Coal Company and Great Elk Company. Backward glance at Walker 
County operations. Beginning of Corona mines. Work of L. B. Mus- 
grove. County men in the lead. Men outside of county interested. A 
new captain steps into coal business. Record of Frank Nelson, Jr. Or- 
ganization of Empire Coal Company. 



Chapter XXIX — The Triumph of the T. C. 1 507 

New syndicate acquires control of Tennessee Company. Necessity for a 
steel man at head of concern. Brief review of steel mill project. Don 
H. Bacon resigns as chief executive of T. C. I. Strong financial men of 
country become new owners. John A. Topping of Ohio elected chair- 
man of executive committee. Review of his policy with Tennessee 
Company. Sketch of Mr. Topping's career. Glimpse into Ohio field. 
Appointment of young Frank Hearne Crockard of West Virginia to 
captain Tennessee Company. Backward glance of Mr. Crockard's 
work. Complete reorganization of Tennessee Company. Legitimate 
development work gets its first foothold in affairs of this company. 



CONTENTS 



xix 



Inauguration of great scheme of iron and steel making. Bird's-eye view 
of Ensley steel plant. Modern features introduced by Crockard. Panic 
times hit country. Behind the scenes on Wall Street. Crisis in affairs 
of Moore and Schley banking firm. Conference of the great financiers. 
Proposition to sell majority stock of Tennessee Company to United 
States Steel Corporation put up to John Pierpont Morgan. Theodore 
Roosevelt's hand in this "panic-relief measure." Tennessee Com- 
pany is merged into Steel Corporation. Sensation of the Street. 
How Alabama received the great news. Richard H. Edmond's com- 
prehensive review of situation. Appointment by United States Steel 
Corporation of a new president of T. C. I., George Gordon Crawford. 
Biographical sketch of Mr. Crawford. His start in iron and steel busi- 
ness in Pittsburg as chemist in laboratory of Edgar Thomson Steel 
Works. Practical nature of his theories. Hard work and rapid promo- 
tion. His achievements as manager of National Department of National 
Tube Company. Administration of Tennessee Company affairs. Present- 
day organization of great company. Resume of former administrations. 
Era of great expansion inaugurated. Immense capital invested by 
Steel Corporation in T. C. I. properties. Provision of adequate water 
supply made at last. Summary of Gordon Crawford's work. The 
modern spirit quickens Alabama. 

Chronological Table 535 



Index 



539 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Old Tannehill Frontispiece 

Facing Page 

The Bluff Hobuckintopa, by courtesy of E. A. Smith, State 

Geologist 8 

Old St. Stephens Street Scene, by courtesy of E. A. Smith, 

State Geologist 8 

Box-maker's Bluff, on the Tombigbee, by courtesy of E. A. 

Smith, State Geologist 8 

Eock House in Shades Valley, by courtesy of E. C. Moore- 
field 8 

Old French Cannon, by courtesy of Thomas M. Owen ... 16 

A Smithy in the Long-leaf Pines 16 

" Uncle 99 Nat's Corner on Eepublic Iron and Steel Com- 
pany's Land, by courtesy of John H. Adams .... 16 
The Piney Woods Express, by courtesy of C. P. Orr ... 16 
Old Mahan Homestead, by courtesy of Anna Pfaff .... 24 

Colonel Tannehill's Old House 24 

Public Eoad near Brierfield Eolling Mills, by courtesy of 

Anna Pfaff 24 

In the Blue Cahaba Hills on the Eoad to Brighthope, by 

courtesy of Anna Pfaff 24 

Site of Old Cedar Creek, First Blast Furnace of Alabama, 

by courtesy of W. A. Orman 32 

Euins of Brighthope Furnace in Bibb County, by courtesy 

of Anna Pfaff 32 

Eob Eoy Catalan Forge on Talladega Creek, by courtesy of 

E. S. Hodges 32 

Historic Spaulding Mine on Eed Mountain 46 

Ishcooda Camp on Eed Mountain 46 

Thomas Peter 64 

Moses Stroup 64 

Jonathan 1ST. Smith 64 

Horace Ware 64 

Michael Tuomey, First State Geologist 64 



xxii ILLUSTRATIONS 

Facing Page 

Daniel Hillman, Jr 64 

Signature of General Gorgas, Chief of Ordnance of the 

Confederacy, by courtesy of K. C. Mahan 80 

An Old Bill of Lading, 23 June, 1859 80 

A Bill of Machinery for Eound Mountain Iron Works . . 80 

Rickey Mine 112 

Tip-top of Red Mountain 112 

Baylis E. Grace 128 

Samuel Noble 128 

General Josiah Gorgas 128 

Major "Tom" Peters 128 

John T. Milner 128 

Colonel J. W. Sloss 128 

Description of Selma Fortifications in December, 1863 . . 188 
Ruins of Brierfield Rolling Mills, by courtesy of Anna 

Pfaff 208 

Last Relic of Iron Works of the Confederacy, by courtesy 

of Anna Pfaff 208 

Old Bibb Furnaces, Brierfield, by courtesy of Anna Pfaff 208 

Map of Alabama 256 

Truman H. Aldrich 268 

First Shaft Opened at Pratt Mines, by courtesy of Llewellyn 

Johns 274 

Slave Quarters Old Hawkins Plantation 274 

Site of Adams Dam Forge on the Little Cahaba 274 

Old Helena Coal Mines, by courtesy of Llewellyn Johns . 292 
Lump of Coal sent to New Orleans Exposition by Pratt 

Coal and Iron Company, by courtesy of Llewellyn 

Johns 292 

Progress of the Exposition Party, by courtesy of Llewellyn 

Johns 292 

Ruins of Old Tannehill Furnaces, by courtesy of J. H. 

Adams 314 

Eagle Forge on Talladega Creek, by courtesy of R. S. 

Hodges 314 

Woodstock Charcoal Furnace 314 

Old Tecumseh Furnace, by courtesy of W. B. Phillips . . 314 

Llewellyn Johns 354 

F. B. Keiser 354 

John Campbell Maben 354 

John H. Adams . 354 



ILLUSTRATIONS xxiii 

Facing Page 

" Uncle " Bob Fuller, A Tannehill Survivor 356 

The Old Mansion House 356 

Family Burial Ground of Old Hawkins Estate 356 

" Roadey," Pet Mule of Colonel DeBardeleben 356 

Colonel Enoch Ensley . . . . 360 

Nat Baxter, Jr 360 

Colonel Alfred Montgomery Shook 360 

T. T. Hillman 360 

James Bowron, Jr 360 

Modern Brown Ore Mines 410 

Old Brown Ore Mines of Woodstock Company 410 

First Open-Hearth Furnace in Birmingham District, by 

courtesy of J. W. Bush 410 

Face of a Working Heading in Muscoda Mines, Red 

Mountain 422 

Method of Dumping Ore into Skips 422 

Edward M. Tutwiler 438 

John A. Topping 438 

Eugene A. Smith 438 

James W. McQueen 458 

Edwin Ball 468 

Don H. Bacon 468 

William T. Underwood 468 

Main Entrance to Slope, Fossil Mines 472 

Old Entry in Valley View Mine, Red Mountain .... 472 

Looking Down Main Slope, Muscoda Mines 472 

Guy R. Johnson 478 

Colonel T. G. Bush 478 

William P. Pinckard . 478 

Fred M. Jackson 478 

Erskine Ramsay, portrait study by Morton 488 

Mammoth Mine 494 

Banner Mine 494 

Flat Creek Mine 494 

Frank Nelson, Jr 504 

The New Ensley Blast Furnaces 512 

Banner Mines, Pratt Consolidated Coal Company .... 512 

On the Crest of Red Mountain 512 

Frank Hearne Crockard, portrait study by Morton ... 514 

George Gordon Crawford 528 



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 



FOR valuable criticism and suggestions in the prepara- 
tion of this work the author is indebted to Dr. Thomas 
M. Owen, director of the Department of Archives and 
History of Alabama; to Dr. Sioussat, professor of history of 
the University of the South, Sewanee, Tennessee; to Theo 
Pollok of Los Angeles, California; to Flora Warren Smith of 
Muscogee, Oklahoma; to John E. "Ware of Birmingham, Ala- 
bama; to Caroline Stiles Lovell of Birmingham, Alabama, 
and to Agnes E. Ryan of Winthrop, Massachusetts. The author 
is also indebted to the members of the committee appointed by 
the Chamber of Commerce and to the members of the various 
county committees, as well as to the leading officers of the repre- 
sentative coal and iron companies of the Birmingham District, 
and to the press of Birmingham. 

To the several hundred public-spirited men and women in 
all sections of the South who have contributed data for this 
work the author is most grateful. Had there not been such wide 
public interest and co-operation in the gathering of the material 
for this history, its making might have taken a much longer 
time than it has, for the material has been obtained almost 
wholly from private sources, through personal interview and 
correspondence with the descendants of the pioneer iron-masters 
and with the present-day leaders of the coal and iron business. 
Old manuscripts, pamphlets, letters, in the possession of private 
individuals; old bills, inventories, old county papers, clippings 
from lost reports and papers, photographs, genealogical records, 
scrapbooks (in particular those loaned by Miss Mary Noble of 
Anniston, Alabama, and Mrs. H. F. DeBardeleben, Erskine 
Ramsay, James Bowron, and Llewellyn Johns of Birmingham) 
have been generously contributed to this work. Many items 
of incidental interest bearing on the subject-matter have, how- 
ever, been found in the works of the Alabama historians. 

For all assistance in every way, for every pleasant courtesy 
given to the writer by the people of Alabama during the making 
of this book, a deep appreciation is due. 



INTRODUCTION 



THE State of Alabama is now generally regarded as 
the coming center of the iron and steel industry of 
North America, and the Birmingham District as the 
ultimate rival of the Pittsburg District. Since 1890 Alabama 
has, as a matter of fact, dictated the price of pig iron to the 
United States. According to the latest statistics she ranks first 
in the production of brown ore, third in the production of red 
hematite, and third in total production; she is third in the 
production of coke, fourth in that of pig iron, fifth in production 
of coal, and fifth in the manufacture of steel. 

That capital to a stupendous amount is being steadily in- 
vested year by year in the mineral region here is a simple com- 
mercial fact. As it happens there prevail in this region certain 
rather extraordinary conditions from the geological viewpoint: 
a combination of iron ore, coal, and limestone — all the mate- 
rials for the manufacture of pig iron, and consequently for the 
manufacture of steel — in such close proximity as to be prac- 
tically in one locality. Not to infer in the least that it is the 
" best " coal, the " best " ore, the " best " flux " in the world," 
but simply it is the combination of the three in such a way that 
results in the making of pig iron and steel are obtainable at low 
cost. Ways and means to commercial success in the iron and steel 
business in this particular section of the country appear, in short, 
such as to influence capital at home and abroad, and indeed to 
arouse a national curiosity and interest in things Alabamian. 

It is, therefore, mainly her coal and iron business that en- 
ables Alabama to stand upon the self-respecting basis, industri- 
ally speaking, that she is beginning to have to-day. Although 
called a cotton State pure and simple for over three generations 
(iron not being officially mentioned as a product of Alabama as 
late as the eighteen-seventies), yet a search into such fragmentary 
records as exist reveals the circumstance that iron making has 
actually been in progress in this State for nearly a hundred 



xxvi 



INTRODUCTION 



years. A blast furnace, indeed, was built before Alabama was 
admitted to the Union. Coal mining operations, brown ore 
mining, forges, and furnaces antedate cotton mills. Yet no 
complete statistical or chronological table of events in the coal 
and iron record of Alabama or her sister States has ever been 
compiled; no connected historical narrative has ever before been 
attempted. Year after year, generation after generation, the 
facts have fed the winds, and full a century's work has gone 
unchronicled. Wherefore the ground is virgin soil. Out of 
origins far back and obscure, and apparently slight and in- 
cidental, has come the making of big modern business. 

The early chronicles of nearly all coal and iron companies 
operating in Alabama to-day have qualities of a peculiar his- 
toric interest, and of far other than commercial flavor, — roots, 
indeed, reaching deep almost as their mines, into the substrata 
and bed-rock of Alabama legend and history. Tangled and dry 
at first they may seem, for they are found at the end of 
far dark windings, but when uncovered to sunlight, they have 
not only freshness and vigor, but real significance in State 
records, and, in fact, in some instances a direct relationship to 
United States history. There is, for instance, a close connection 
with the United States Army and Navy, Confederate States 
Army and Navy, United States Senate and House of Repre- 
sentatives, the Confederate Congress, and with the railroad in- 
terests of the country, while there is scarcely a mineral section 
of the United States, or indeed of England, Scotland, and Wales, 
whose history is not in some way related — mainly through the 
workers in the field — with the mineral development of the 
South. Among these workers are descendants of old Dutch, 
Welsh, Scotch, English, and Cornish miners and iron-masters ; of 
Irish scholars and soldiers; of English Puritans, Quakers, and 
French Huguenots; of early colonists of Virginia, North and 
South Carolina, and Georgia ; and descendants of soldiers of the 
American Revolution, the War of 1812, and the Mexican War. 

If ever an industry was set against a large background, 
one of stirring life and romance, it is the coal and iron business 
of Alabama. It is, indeed, of the State itself, — bone of its 
bone and blood of its blood. The history of the one fully told 
is the history of the other; the elements compounding the one 
have made the other. The facts all gathered together in them- 
selves tell a story with a quick pulse. Here are struggle, pathos, 



INTRODUCTION 



xxvii 



and humor, intrigue, defeat, and triumph. Yet there are many 
coal and iron men of the State, who, like that pioneer leader of 
the Birmingham District, Colonel DeBardeleben, have but little 
patience with the idea of turning it all into a book. The colonel 
does not care for books anyhow. " The rocks and the forest are 
the only books I care about reading," he says. " I can sit on 
an old stump and paint all the pictures I want. . . . The future 
is what a man looks to. Who cares a hang about the past ? — 
things that are over and done? Well — and I know my own 
measure — just so big and no bigger — know what I J ve done 
and what the other fellows have done. What 's the use of writing 
any of it down ? When anything is written about it sounds like 
slush. Then, besides, it 's all such an old story." 

It is just that — an old story — old in the Hill Country of 
Alabama, but new to the outside world. The iron-masters of 
the State have all been far too busy making iron ever to think 
of the making of books about it. Not that they have been so 
much self-engrossed, perhaps, as work-engrossed. Few among 
them have ever stopped to review the work of their fathers be- 
fore them, or for that matter to see the results, beyond dollars 
and cents, of their own work. Few have ever paused to reflect 
upon former processes, — the fallen forces that feed the new, 
young growth, — the old, slow, heavy ways and means of toil 
out of which the present-day stature of the coal and iron busi- 
ness has in such measure been builded, so vast a business, indeed, 
that all the world is turning South and asking how and why. 

Beginning with 1798, that significant year of Southern his- 
tory when the United States organized Mississippi Territory 
out of the land ceded by Spain, this story follows the growth 
of the iron and coal business, step by step, from that very year 
to the present time. It shows the evolution of coal and ore • 
mining, blast furnace construction, iron and steel making, 
the efforts, discoveries, activities, experiments, demonstrations, 
and achievements of four generations. It is found, indeed, 
simply a mounting by slow and picturesque degrees from noth- 
ing up to something, a change from simple to complex, from 
individual effort to organized power. The whole is curiously 
inwrought with many-colored threads, tapestry woven as it 
were by Indian, French, and Spanish. 1 It tells the life story 

1 The first Catalan forges recorded in the South, for instance, — if one 
may tread back into centuries beyond strict historical reckoning, — were put 



xxviii 



INTRODUCTION 



of the pioneer settlers, the early blacksmiths, the first prospectors 
and coal miners, the iron-masters, the geologists, the planters, 
and bankers, the railroad men, the military men, — all who were 
factors at all in the development of the mineral region of Ala- 
bama during the nineteenth century. The great debt that mod- 
ern Alabama owes to her pioneer workers — those few strong, 
far-seeing men who long ago had faith in her great resources 
and dreamed the dreams that are now coming true — can 
scarcely be overestimated. Theirs was no easy task. It meant 
fight to build their iron works, fight to make their iron, fight to 
carry it to market, and everlasting fight to get the money for 
it after it was sold. And some of these men had far wider no- 
tions than merely to sell their pig iron as this book tells; they 
had the spirit of empire builders. Yet, to see anything espe- 
cially heroic in the man living right down in your own home 
town or county, one who may be simply your next-door neigh- 
bor, takes imagination, it is said. But when one looks back 
upon the lives of the road-breakers of the State, and in the 
ease and opportunity of to-day discerns the old trials, he com- 
prehends what heavy toil at such small gain it meant, what 
patience, what grit. 

The scene of the story for the most part is out in the woods 
of the Hill Country, — a land of big spaces, wide and rugged 
and wild, — true American in every sense. Alabama, one of the 
southernmost States bordering the Gulf of Mexico, has an area 
a trifle larger than that of England. From north to south the 
State is three hundred miles, and from east to west, two hun- 
dred, or, in all, fifty-two thousand square miles, of which one- 
fifth is known as the mineral region. 

Tennessee, Georgia, and Mississippi, the three States border- 
ing Alabama on the north, east, and west, are so intimately con- 
nected with all the periods of her industrial and political 
history that at times the State lines are all but obliterated. 
Florida has less import, reaching white and warm — pale sand 
and quivering pine — along Alabama's southern border, leav- 
ing our State but a sixty-mile coast stretch on the Mexican 
Sea, — a precious coast line, laden with historic treasure, but 
having significance here only as port of outlet for coal and iron 

up, according to Pickett, by De Soto's soldier-artisans to temper the steel 
of the Spanish swords and to repair the Spanish arms and armour, as the 
adelantado and his men tramped through the wilderness. 



INTRODUCTION 



xxix 



to the seaports of the world. Our main concern is, of course, far- 
ther north, where the great Appalachian region penetrates the 
State and the long lines of its faraway hills merge into the 
southern plains. Foothills are here, mountain ridges, valley 
region, plateaux, every aspect, feature, form, and detail of that 
mountain system of such gigantic, formidable mold, reproduced 
in the extreme South in miniature as it were. 

The mineral region is differentiated geologically into four 
sections, — Highland Rim, Cumberland Plateau, Appalachian 
Valley, and the Ashland Plateau. In the first, one " rides fet- 
lock deep in brown ore"; in the second, one comes upon that 
famous one-hundred-mile range of iron ore known as Red Moun- 
tain, and traverses also the two great coal fields, the Black 
Warrior and Lookout Mountain. In the third section, the Ap- 
palachian Valley, are the long reaches of the State's other two 
great coal fields, the Coosa and the Cahaba, and more brown ore, 
while in the Ashland Plateau are riches of many sorts and kinds, 
— a very maze of mineral riches running wild. These plateaux 
and valleys trace a diagonal line across Alabama from northeast 
to southwest, giving to this portion of the State a gradual slop- 
ing toward the Valley of the Mississippi. 

Jagged and picturesque, this mineral belt runs midway be- 
tween the Grain belt at the North and at the South, the Cotton 
belt (or the canebrake, part of the Gulf Plains), while at the 
extreme southern end of the State winds the belt of the Long 
Leaf Pine. In the Mineral belt, the ten thousand square miles 
of Hill Country, there are, all told, twenty-eight counties to 
travel through, only a few of which belong, however, to the 
records of pioneer days. 

The significant cities now in a history of Alabama are for 
once not Mobile, Montgomery, and Huntsville — those long- 
established three; but rather Greater Birmingham and Annis- 
ton, Gadsden, and Sheffield, the new young cities beginning 
now to take their place in the world's work. Birmingham is 
less than forty years old to-day, and yet it has, together with 
its environs, recently merged into Greater Birmingham under 
the King Bill (Ensley, Pratt City, Thomas, North Birming- 
ham, Woodward, Gate City), a population of one hundred and 
fifty thousand souls. 

In his recent tour of the country President Taft said that 
he usually thinks of Birmingham as one of the group of cities, 



XXX 



INTRODUCTION 



like Atlanta, Pittsburg, Chicago, Minneapolis, Seattle, and Los 
Angeles, — that does things. Said he: 

"Birmingham, because of her cosmopolitan character and 
because she is becoming more and more aware of how close she 
is to the North and how close she is to the entire country in a 
business way, is influencing the South, as the North is influenced 
toward her, to believe that this country is ceasing to have sec- 
tions — not ceasing to have traditions. And there is a distinc- 
tion I would like to make as emphatic as possible. 

" I would not have the South give up a single one of her noble 
traditions. I would not have her abate a single bit of the deep 
pride she feels in all her great heroes that represented her in that 
awful struggle between the North and South; but I would have 
the whole country know, as I believe the South is growing herself 
to know, that it is possible to preserve all those traditions intact 
and have a warm and deeply loyal love of the old flag to which she 
has come back, and to know that the North respects her for those 
traditions she preserves, and does not ask her to discard one; 
but only wishes to unite with her in the benefits of a common 
cause, and of a sympathy and association between the peoples of 
the two sections that will certainly lead us on to a greater and 
greater future." 

Now, Birmingham — this winged activity bred out of the 
ashes of war's waste — has a history that is in a way a great 
story. To begin with, it had, back of its conception, the sincere 
spirit, for its founder, John T. Milner, a public-spirited 
civil engineer, was a distinctly patriot sort. His city, con- 
ceived for a great workshop town, was deep answer to the 
State's need of those times. The story of its battle for existence 
is given in minute detail in these pages, and it is shown 
how at length the coal and the iron captains marched it along 
to victory. The strong trio at the lead in the pioneer days of 
the Birmingham District — Henry F. DeBardeleben, James W. 
Sloss, and Truman H. Aldrich, and their associates — have done 
a great work for Alabama. 

And full of what zest for it all they were ! Hear Colonel 
DeBardeleben : " I 'd rather be out in the woods on the back of 
a fox-trotting mule with a good seam of coal at my feet than 
be president of the United States ! " And again : " Ah," he says, 
" there 's nothing like taking a wild piece of land all rock and 
woods — ground not fit to feed a goat on — and turning it into 
a settlement of men and women; making pay rolls; bringing 
the railroads in; starting things to going. . . . Nothing like 



INTRODUCTION 



xxxi 



boring a hillside through and turning over a mountain ! That ? s 
what money ? s for ! I like to use money as I use a horse to 
ride ! " And he rode — good sooth ! (" Ca, ha! le Pegasus qui 
a les narines de feu!'') 

He set the town just lifted off the verge to going at the pace 
that killed. Not just " millions " now, but " billions in it ! " 
Surely it was a game of Follow My Leader — and a high old 
game indeed. When struck by the cloudburst of 1893, however, 
it fell sheer over the precipice and down to the bottom. . . . 

As for all the rest that followed it is told here, — up to the 
very time when the panic of 1907 strikes the South and the < 
great company around which the whole mineral region swings, 
the Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company ? quivers on the 
verge of collapse; and there is lifted out of the chaos a Titan's 
hand, — the hand of John Pierpont Morgan (the one-man power 
again back of industrial events — this time of a nation, not a 
State), — and the Tennessee Company is merged with the 
United States Steel Corporation, and is lifted out of Wall Street 
for good and all. Certainly the capitalists of the world are aware 
of the ground they are planting in. 

Only in the present day do the visions of the pioneer workers 
of Alabama begin to take definite form and shape. Birming- 
ham is now conservative grown in some degree, is at any rate 
shy of the " grand stand," and wary of the cry, " Millions and 
Billions!" 

At a recent meeting of the International League of Press 
clubs at Birmingham John Sparrow 1 gave this fine-spirited de- 
scription of the young city: 

"The visitor is quick to sense the spell which Birmingham 
casts over its citizens. 

" It is the grip of a drama wherein expectation is never cloyed, 
and suspense, though sometimes poignant, is tempered by the 
intuition that forces are moving in an orderly way to a splendid 
climax. 

" The Birmingham man himself is unconscious of this appeal 
to his dramatic instinct. He will tell you he had rather live in 
Birmingham than anywhere else because things happen naturally 
here, there is no forcing of effects, no theatrical clap-trap, none 
of the fireworks with which some other cities he has in mind are 
wont to usher in their star events. Developments come, he holds, 

1 Mr. Sparrow, scholar, philosopher, and newspaper man, was formerly 
connected with the leading papers of Montgomery and Birmingham. 



xxxii 



INTRODUCTION 



because they must — slowly or quickly as they may, but inevi- 
tably. What are a few months or a few years to a city whose 
place on the map is permanent, and whose future a century 
hence is as assured as if it were the total of a simple sum in 
addition ? There is iron ore in the mountains and valleys to last 
longer than that, and coal enough hard by to melt it and feed 
furnace mouths on land and sea besides. The steel problem is 
worked out, and the building of more furnaces and mills and 
factories are matters of detail. Why, then, should he boast and 
cram statistics down the throat of his guest? 

" If you ask him for figures as to iron and coal and steel he 
will tell you those which have been published are approximately 
correct, but absolutely accurate data as to resources and growth 
are unattainable — it is impossible for any one man to know his 
Birmingham thoroughly. In the lockers of the iron and coal cor- 
porations are secrets as to supply and cost of production which 
would astound if revealed. Manufacturing plants spring up 
overnight, as it were, in out-of-the-way places, avoiding rather than 
courting notice. Storekeepers swing their signs in by-streets 
without blast of trumpets. And thus it is in all lines of activity ; 
the note is spontaneous, the energy is inward rather than dif- 
fusive. The record, to be authoritative, would have to be 
revised daily. 

"Birmingham, he will assure you, is the most evenly developed 
city of its age in the South, if not in the United States. It is 
a great mining camp, if you will have it so, Pittsburg in embryo, 
if you like. But as the center of the cotton belt, so demon- 
strated by geography and ginners' figures, its commercial im- 
portance is becoming more insistent. Its jobbing trade has a 
radius of 500 miles, and the volume of its retail trade is larger 
than that of any other city between Cincinnati and New Orleans. 
The power of its banks is felt in all adjoining States. It is the 
best produce market in the Gulf country. It is a second 
Philadelphia in the number of its home-owners. 

" And as a last word he will tell you the Birmingham you see 
is but the nucleus of the Greater Birmingham soon to be, with its 
population of 150,000. And beyond that is the Greater Bir- 
mingham of the ultimate future — twenty miles long as the 
crow flies, hilltops covered with homes and the narrow valley 
between crowded with furnaces and factories and the sundry 
physical embodiments of industry and traffic. And any engi- 
neer can see with half an eye, that here is cast the mold of a great 
city, whose filling in is to be the work of generations. 

" Thus is voiced in some measure the spirit of Birmingham — 
progressive, yet not without a certain kind of serenity, the 
serenity which comes from a supreme confidence in the future. 
A broad and tolerant spirit, and singularly appreciative. He 
who can do things gets his deserts and a little more in Birming- 
ham ; that is why it is the young man's town. And yet the sense 



INTRODUCTION 



xxxiii 



of proportion is stronger here than in many communities. The 
newly-arrived newspaper worker may challenge this statement 
by pointing to stories in the local press told in a couple of sticks- 
full, which could be spun into columns with flaring heads. 
The truth is, big events are commonplace here, so quickly do 
they tread upon each others heels. 

" Eemember, the drama will not be played out in a handful 
of decades. It is to run into the long years. Wherefore it is 
wisdom to accept the acts of the day at their proper present value 
and future significance." 

Although giving the main facts of the coal and iron business 
of the Birmingham, Sheffield, and Anniston districts, an out- 
line of the entire mineral region, and the history of every com- 
pany of importance, this book is, after all, mainly a book about 
men, — such men as have translated their ideas into mines, fur- 
naces, steel plants, great companies and corporations, railroad 
systems, and the workshop towns and cities of the South. They 
are not thought of here as " coal barons," " steel kings," " rail- 
way magnates," and the like, but simply as plain, every-day, 
normal business men. And personal qualities are first and last. 

According to Professor William James of Harvard College, 
the end and aim of all the higher educational and university 
training of the present day is, when all is said, simply " to know 
a good man when we see him." Xothing better than that has 
ever been evolved out of modern college ethics. To follow Dr. 
James further : " The feeling for a good human job anywhere, 
the admiration of the really admirable, the disesteem of what is 
cheap and trashy and impermanent — this is what we call the 
critical sense, the sense for ideal values. It is the better part 
of what men know as wisdom. . . . To scent out human excel* 
lence . . . to divine it amid its accidents; to discern . . . just 
what types of activity have stood the test of time." 

One takes high place in his community (in these pages) 
rather more by the measure of his amount of personal force, 
good sense, and labor than by the amount of dollars he has 
amassed (a perfectly outlandish point of view, Mr. George Ber- 
nard Shaw would undoubtedly exclaim). Something, indeed, 
is essayed here beyond " The Story of Billions," and " How a 
Millionaire is Made." 

A redundancy of colonels might possibly be urged against this 
history. That the colonels are in the book cannot be denied. 
But then — so are they in Alabama and in all her sister States ; 



xxxiv 



INTRODUCTION 



War Department records both Federal and Confederate to the 
contrary notwithstanding. This particular title is now exactly 
as it used to be, distinctly reserved in the South for the man of 
estate or of achievement — or both — in the walks of civil life. 
While it is perfectly true that certain of the present-day leaders 
of the Birmingham District — George B. McCormack, George 
Gordon Crawford, and Frank Nelson, Jr., among them — have 
up to date escaped the honors, it is merely a matter of time before 
they, too, will succumb to the inevitable. 

Further, it may be said that the romantic and the picturesque 
are given too much account of in a subject comprehending such 
a wide maze of technical and industrial fact and circumstances. 
But it is a mistake to divorce the business world from all the 
historical and really charming association properly belonging 
to it. Fact and romance walk hand in hand. One is of just 
as much importance as the other, and if the light of true vision 
be turned upon them they can never be torn asunder. 

So this, indeed, is not a book at all, — only the Hill Country 
talking to you and me. Come, therefore, miles and miles out 
in the coal fields and listen with your ear to the ground. Go, 
sit on an old stump as DeBardeleben does, and paint you pic- 
tures out of your own head ... see towns rise ! Or get off in 
the woods, around St. Stephen's Bluff, or in a houseboat on the 
Tombigbee, own comrade with Eugene Smith and Truman Aid- 
rich, and read the story of the rocks with them, and go a hunt- 
ing up some old lost silver mine they say the Indians worked! 

Do anything but sit in a ceiled room and read a printed book. 
Listen to Friend Aldrich speak : " Man is a humbug ! Have I 
not told you over and over ? Man is an ass ! Man is a creature 
to be led by the nose. Pull the wool over his eyes . . . stuff the 
cotton in his ears ... he 's easy . . . easy ! " . . . 

Lo, now! ... the cotton and the wool! Be easy! Follow, 
now, with me. Trace a dim and all but obliterated trail to the 
ruins of some old stone furnace forgotten in the forest. Come, 
mount a little bridle path leading to Red Mountain, and while 
we ride together, you and I, let us listen to the story that Ala- 
bama tells — an old, old story — old as the hills— yet as fresh 
as the morning! 

ETHEL ARMES. 

Birmingham, Alabama, 
December, 1909. 



THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN 
ALABAMA 



THE STORY OF COAL AND 
IRON IN ALABAMA 

CHAPTER I 

THE PLANTING OF THE SEED 

Beginning of coal and iron business of Alabama. Origin of first iron 
workers. Organic relation to State. Diversified character of activities. 
First iron used imported blooms. Tradition of initial service of native 
iron ore. Indians in possession of country. Highly organized tempera- 
ment of ancient tribes. Adverse circumstances of later day confronting 
frontier settlers. Pushmataha quotes General Washington on need for 
mechanics and tools of industry among Indians. Tombigbee District 
root ground of institutions of State. Fort St. Stephens, first depot of 
iron supplies and headquarters of artisans. Biography of Benjamin 
Hawkins. His progressive attitude towards Indians. Early smiths at 
Fort Toulouse. Incidents of Bienville's old trading post. Feeble hold 
of French and Spanish. The great myth of Alabama. Picturesque 
facts and traditions of Indian origin. Naming of coal fields. Iron ore 
of Red Mountain as war paint. Ancient festivals of Valley region. 
Significant background of Birmingham District. 




N the mists of the early nineteenth century, when Alabama 
was an Indian world, the seeds of her coal and iron business 
were planted. Sown in the wilderness by frontier black- 



smiths these two great allied industries — ever close kin to mother 
earth — were lit during the first years of their growth by the 
dying Indian fires. Viewed in the light of these fallen embers 
and with poignant sense of the far geological cycles stretching 
back into the infinite dark beyond the history of human kind, 
mine and forge, furnace, mill, shop, and foundry stand out on a 
vast horizon line. 

The sturdy figures of the old toilers tramp by with swinging 
stride early in the dawn and blaze the way for the iron masters 
riding hard after them. The spirit of the romance of adventure 
that is in the beginnings of all things, to some, at least, of the 



2 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



men who do the dreaming of empires and the pioneering thereof, 
quickens the young day's planting from dawn until dark. 

The first recorded incident in the making of the coal and iron 
business of Alabama belongs to the last decade of the eighteenth 
century when, at the instance of the United States Indian Agent, 
Benjamin Hawkins, a crew of blacksmiths was sent to the Creek 
Nation in lower Mississippi Territory. Together with a number 
of other smiths, machinists, and wagon-makers, belonging to An- 
drew Jackson's brigades and mustered out after the War of 1812, 
these frontiersmen made up the first body of the pioneer coal 
diggers and iron makers of the State. On the ground before the 
geologist, they were the original explorers and the discoverers 
of a large portion of the mineral fields. 

Straight to them and their crude workings all the back tracks 
of this history lead. They, their sons, and their grandsons did 
significant work during the frontier and territorial periods and 
the first years of statehood to help Alabama learn to carry her 
own weight from the industrial standpoint. For among them 
were not only coal miners, forge, furnace, and foundry builders, 
but also millers, carpenters, tanners, shopkeepers, mechanics, 
cotton-gin makers, lumber men, boat builders, railroad con- 
tractors, and surveyors. 

To shoe horses, mules, and oxen was only incidental in the 
daily labor of the frontier smiths. They furnished the first 
settlers of Alabama with ways and means to conquer the wilder- 
ness" and to create and maintain permanent settlement. To 
begin with they made and repaired weapons for the hunt and for 
defense against the Indians: guns, rifles, knives, and pistols. 
They turned out every sort of farming tool and implement : axes, 
plow-tips, harrow teeth, shovels, fire tongs, plow stocks, spades, 
cow-bells, and picks, besides wagon tires, bolts, nuts, and hinges. 
They also fashioned a great deal of "hollow ware," as the 
domestic and kitchen utensils were termed: bake ovens, huge 
iron pots and cranes, frying pans, skillets, " dog irons," flatirons 
and firebacks. Moreover, every smith was a farmer and a soldier, 
too, and a goodly number of them were descended from men who 
fought in the Revolution. 

By the year 1819, when Alabama was admitted to the Union, 
there was not a community in the State without its blacksmith 
shop and its hardy frontier man-of-work. It was in blacksmith 
shops as well as in log churches that the first judicial courts of 



THE PLANTING OF THE SEED 



3 



Alabama held session. Indeed, a blacksmith shop existed before 
even a church was founded, that is to say, in the English-speak- 
ing communities of the territory. For in the year 1798, in 
among the cabins of the old Indian town of Took-au-bat-che on 
the Tallapoosa, " a smithy of logs at the public establishment " 
is mentioned by Benjamin Hawkins in his " Sketch of the Creek 
Country," while at Fort St. Stephens a government blacksmith 
shop was put up in 1801 and a depot of iron supplies was estab- 
lished there two years later in an old Spanish blockhouse. In the 
city of Birmingham, founded some three generations later, the 
first shack built was a blacksmith shop. 

Iron used at the start by the frontier smiths was necessarily 
bar iron and blooms imported from England and Sweden, and, 
according to John S. Glidden, a St. Stephens blacksmith, it was 
steered up the Tombigbee Eiver from Mobile or carried to the 
fort by pack mules. 

The earliest use of the Alabama iron ore itself was, on the 
count of a tradition general throughout the hill country, to shoe 
the horses of Andrew Jackson and his men when, at the call of 
George Strother Gaines in behalf of the Indian assailed settlers, 
" Old Hickory " came, wounded as he was, but with gun, sword, 
and grit, over the Big Bend of the Tennessee, with all his moun- 
tain men. A fair start surely for iron making, and having, too, 
a militant ring ! For, indeed, the iron business had well begun, 
mailed for conflict, and looking to reverses. Destined to fight its 
way along, inch by inch, from the first, it was a long and bitter 
struggle against as heavy odds as ever beset any industry, in old 
world or new. 

When the first crew of smiths, Colonel Hawkins' men, came 
south, Alabama was held neck and crop by the Indians : Chero- 
kees and Chickasaws in the rich-forested hill country to the 
north ; Creeks and Choctaws midland in the long, green, swoop- 
ing valleys, the cane-brake plains, and the river lands, and down 
among the sands and pines of the southern reaches, in and around 
the scant white settlements along the Tombigbee. At the land's 
end cringed the Spanish, whined and complained the futile 
French. 

Alabama, later than the other southern States to come into 
the grip of the English settlers, was the last possession of the 
Indians east of Mississippi and their most cherished one. 
" They loved their native land," writes Bancroft of the Chero- 



4 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



kees, " and above all, they loved its rivers." Their towns and 
villages were built usually in the rich lowlands near the head- 
waters of rivers and by springs and creeks. There were elements 
of an odd and symbolic interest in the outer structure of those 
vanished communities, qualities, indeed, of rare sweetness and 
strange psychic sense, later lost. The houses were of pleasantly 
spacious dimensions and set upon mounds and terraces. The 
dwelling of the chief, always upon the highest ground neighbor- 
ing the Grand Cabin of the Council, faced invariably the rising 
sun, in order that the chief might be daily reminded that even 
so must he awaken each morning and keep watch over his peo- 
ple, and be always aware of mounting strength with increasing 
years and of ever growing light. The house called Cabin of the Be- 
loved Men, where slept the oldest leaders of war, of peace, and 
of public service, stood in an angle opposite the dwelling of the 
chief, and faced the setting sun, in order that it might be sug- 
gested to the old men that their lights go out quietly and they 
refrain from the chase and from war. 

The condition of old age seems to have aroused among the 
Indians of early Alabama a feeling of profound devotion and 
reverence, attended, as it so often was, by a power of prophetic 
vision, by rare good sense, and in many instances an exquisite 
sensitiveness and noble sincerity. The houses where the old men 
lived were cloud white to symbolize the spirits of the honored 
men. The other cabins were stained deep red. All the towns were 
enclosed by high walls. In time of peace garlands of ivy leaves 
were placed upon the gate and walls, cabins, towers, and squares, 
and these were changed in time of war to long chains of hard- 
wood rings. Temples were set apart in lonely places with fires 
in them always burning. 

By the early part of the nineteenth century, however, the 
poetry was out of it all. Adventurers, soldiers, priests, traders, 
settlers of the French, Spanish, African, Scotch, Irish, English, 
and Hebrew nations had trodden the Alabama country from time 
to time throughout three hundred years; had charged the In- 
dians, body and spirit, with alien bloods. And the tribes them- 
selves mingled breed with breed until the clean-limbed unity of the 
early Indian of this portion of the South, such as the remnant of 
legend and story leads us to fancy De Soto rode into, — all that 
first fine primal shape, had been utterly deformed and destroyed. 

At this precise period in which the seeds of the iron industry 



THE PLANTING OF THE SEED 5 



were planted, there was going through the Muscogees Tecumseh's 
cry, " Be savages and you will be strong as the hurricane ! " 
And they were savages, and there was war — no clean, plucky 
fights either, but a nasty sort, like a nightmare in the State's long 
sleep. 

There are, however, some instances revealing the noble quality. 
At the time when the British war cloud of the years 1812-14 
began to lower over the feeble Union, the chief Pushmataha stood 
up among his warriors to prevent their alliance with the Eng- 
lish, against the Virginians, as all English-speaking emigrants 
were then named by the Indians of Georgia and Alabama. In 
recalling a visit he had once made to President Washington he 
said: "The delegation was. received by General Washington as 
a father would receive his sons who had been a long time absent. 
He inquired into the wants of our people at home, telling us he 
would send us blacksmiths and wheelwrights to make for us the 
tools of husbandry, spinning wheels, looms, and other necessary 
articles, for it would not do for us to rely much longer upon the 
game of the woods for support. ... He was a man, to be sure, 
but not like other men ; he rarely opened his lips to speak with- 
out saying something useful to be remembered for the good of 
mankind, and especially for his red children." 

That county of lower Mississippi Territory, out of which 
were carved so many others, of both Alabama and Mississippi, in 
the years succeeding this loyal word of Pushmataha, was hon- 
ored with Washington's name. There were planted little log 
cabin colonies, stockaded farms, forts, and trading posts. There 
was uneasy sleep for men of these times. They huddled their 
families like frightened sheep; dared not close their eyes of 
nights and worked with the loaded gun in arm's reach. This 
went on for thirty years and more. Very few ventured as did 
Jackson's smiths. Every condition of the country was savage, 
altogether hostile to either the planting or progress of any in- 
dustry or trade. 

The section of Washington County most settled, and indeed 
the site of the first English settlement of Alabama, bordered the 
Tombigbee Eiver and was named the Tombigbee District. It is 
heavy with history, packed with romance and incidents, for here 
was old Fort St. Stephens; and here during the British era 
every institution of the State took root. " Here were the pioneer 
settlements, the first courts, the first agriculture, the first trades, 



6 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 

the first schools, the first towns," observes that conscientious and 
discerning historian, Peter J. Hamilton. And, on authority of 
Benjamin Hawkins, Albert J. Pickett, Anson West, and John S. 
Glidden, here also were the first iron depot and the first machine 
shop. 

The whole matter of it is traceable to the one man, Benjamin 
Hawkins, termed in a musty, old, unread book, "beloved man 
of the Four Nations." He it was who pointed out to Washing- 
ton and J eff erson that agricultural interests might be set up and 
stimulated in the Indian world of the far South should black- 
smiths be furnished to certain of the tribes to make the tools of 
husbandry. It was this suggestion, acted upon, that became a 
stipulation in various of the early government treaties with the 
Creeks and Choctaws. Though having no marked consequence 
for Indian progress it became one of the primal means by which 
the white men came at length into the land, to have and hold it 
and to reach out a long ways into the future. 

As to Colonel Hawkins, he is an historical figure of some bulk 
in early American history. He was by birth a North Carolinian, 
by education a Princeton man of the class of 1777. Throughout 
his first three years at the university he made a specialty of the 
languages, French, in particular, which became the guiding stone 
to a good deal of what followed. Just as Ben Hawkins entered 
his senior year, the War of the Revolution was flaming out, and 
stepping into the field he was appointed directly on the staff of 
General Washington, acting in the capacity of interpreter. In 
the events succeeding the Revolution he stood well at the front 
in public affairs. Twice delegate to the Continental Congress, 
at the expiration of his second term, in 1785, he was appointed by 
Congress to negotiate treaties with the Creeks and Choctaws. 
At this time he doubtless got his taste for savage life. For after 
a few more years' service as United States Senator from North 
Carolina, in 1795 he was again appointed by President Wash- 
ington on the commission to adjust Indian differences springing 
out of the former Creek treaty. 

Later, Hawkins was appointed by President Jefferson as prin- 
cipal agent of Indian Affairs for all the tribes south of the Ohio 
River, and was accorded power to negotiate treaties, together with 
General Wilkinson and Andrew Pickens. It was a big country 
to oversee, but the task was all much to his liking. With a special 
faculty for acquiring languages, Benjamin Hawkins shortly be- 



THE PLANTING OF THE SEED 7 



came conversant with various Indian tongues. He wrote in 1800, 
" A Sketch of the Creek Country in the Years 1798-99." The 
work indicates him to have been a direct, conscientious sort, ob- 
servant of the physical facts of the country and the peoples about 
him; on the lookout for mill sites and practical advantages; 
sympathetic and sincere in the Indian's behalf. He was ener- 
getic too. " As business increased upon me," he says, " I found 
my mind and exertions always ready to rise above it." He never 
returned "back East" but grew gray in the service and died in 
the wilderness. One record gives 1816 as the date of his death, 
and the place Hawkinsville, Georgia. Another states this as the 
time of his resignation, and refers to a letter written by him to 
the War Department in 1825. His closing years seem to be lost 
in the forest. He came to have an especially kind eye towards 
his mongrel charges in Mississippi Territory and with Gaines 
and Wilkinson, an itching to see things move along towards civ- 
ilization in the fresh, young, savage country. 

There were Federal Government smiths quartered about 1800 
at Tuskegee, an Indian village on the site of the old French gar- 
rison and trading post, Fort Toulouse, in what is now Elmore 
County. This spot is no more than thirty miles from Montgomery, 
the capital city of Alabama. Early as it then was in United 
States history, Fort Toulouse was a tale that had long since 
run. Put up by Bienville in the dumb forest in 1714, near a 
century before the Virginians trod its ground, it stood guard for 
France in the very region from which, eloquent and fragrant, 
the name of Alabama sprung. It was at best but a flimsy wooden 
fort. Within each of its four bastions there were mounted by the 
French two cannon. All that was left of the fort in 1793 were 
the cannon. Colonel Hawkins describes Tuskegee in that year 
thus : " The town is on a bluff on the Coosa, forty-six feet above 
low water mark; the rivers here approach each other within a 
quarter of a mile, then curve out, making a flat of low land of 
three thousand acres which has been rich cane brake. . . . There 
are thirty buildings in the town compactly situated. In the yard 
of the town house there are five cannon of iron, with the trun- 
nions broken off, and on the bluff some brickbats, the only re- 
mains of the French establishment here." 

The sole incident recorded in Pickett's history of a govern- 
ment blacksmith at this point is the filing away of the spikes that 
drove these rusty old guns to earth; the charging them to show 



8 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



the Creeks what gun-fire meant, and, incidentally, what power 
was in the hands of a United States Government blacksmith. 

Thus Fort Toulouse, passing from French and English, fell 
into Muscogee hands ; thence, all but obliterated, it comes to the 
frontier blacksmith crew and at length to Andrew Jackson. 
Only a fragment of its story is to be followed here. Nothing 
but sorrow was permanently builded by either French or Spanish 
on Alabama soil. Apart from blood stain, all that is left of the 
memory of the adelantado is but faint blowing flower of legend 
and echo of a poem. The grasp of France, withdrawn, left but 
little impress save sweet and bitter memory. " The Frenchman 
knows no home but France," writes Peter Hamilton. "He 
may explore and influence a new world but it will be genera- 
tions before he settles far from his fort on the sea, where vessels 
come from France. ... On the Tombigbee as on the Nile the 
Frenchman opened the way, and the Englishman entered into 
his rest." 

Fort Toulouse was founded in 1714 within the very decade of 
the naming of the Alabama River. This myth colors every story 
of Alabama ever told. Of a subtile and delicate texture, related 
by early historians as " fact," it is graven forever in the legend 
and the folklore of the State. A tribe of Indians in old Mexico, 
by name the Alabamas (thicket cleavers, it has been found to 
signify not Here we rest), dared essay battle against Hernando 
Cortez and his men for Montezuma's sake, only to be vanquished. 
Under cloud of defeat, shivering, they crouched back; crept, 
forlorn, across the Rio Grande, and wandered up into the Red 
River country. They came upon the Muscogees at the salt licks 
in Louisiana and by a wanton killing drew on themselves the 
Furies' wings and beaks, the anger of the fierce tribe, sharp- 
taloned and relentless. How they were whirled then for their 
trespass by the stronger force, as withered leaves in teeth of a 
storm, moon to moon, until the pay was made ! From south to 
north and north to east, then south again, to home ground at 
last and peace wrought by Bienville. And at this finding of home, 
at ceasing of the arrow darting wind and ever restless going, 
the tired chief, standing on the oak-shadowed bank of a river 
that wound to the sea, cried " Alabama ! Alabama ! " and struck 
his spear to earth. And it came to pass that the war staff of 
this fabled chief flowered in time in the name of river and of 
country, of State's motto and of State's great seal. Romance 



THE PLANTING OF THE SEED 



9 



pure was thus elected from earliest source, and sent thrilling 
through the growing and exultant body of the wild young land. 

One hundred miles southwest from Fort Toulouse, as the 
crow flies, just where the Alabama Eiver leaps to meet her Choc- 
taw mate, Tombigbee, there rose a tall limestone bluff, rugged 
and wild, called Hobuckintopa. Once a Choctaw man, tortured 
with a sudden and intolerable bodily ill, had leaped from the 
breast of this rock, his last harsh bed on Mother Earth, into the 
Tombigbee sweeping one hundred feet below on to the Mexican 
Gulf. The tragic act made so profound an impression among 
Choctaws that the bluff bore ever afterwards the name Hobuck- 
intopa, a curious instance carried out of the dark of American 
primitive life, through countless generations to the present time. 

At the time the French made a cantonment here, early in the 
eighteenth century, this bluff was given a Christian's name, no 
less a one than that of the proto-martyr himself, St. Stephen. 
And old St. Stephens became in 1817 the temporary seat of 
government of Alabama Territory. 

Farther up stream from Hobuckintopa was just such another 
bluff at junction with a lesser flow of waters. In form it was a 
natural bastion, steep and impregnable, ivory-tinged, pale as 
moonshine, and crowned with black cedars. Here there lived 
from a time unchronicled an aged and solitary Choctaw, who 
gave the whole of his days and years to a vocation accounted by 
his tribe a sacred one, the delicate making of cedar boxes to hold 
the bones of his nation's dead. The creek that tumbled over 
the huge stones at the base of his dark-crowned citadel in its 
clamor for the bigger stream was named Tombikibi (box-maker's 
creek), Etomba-Igaby, Tombigbee, thus giving origin of peculiar 
and intimate nature to the name of the second greatest river of 
the State. This box-maker's bluff, fortified by the French twenty- 
two years after Fort Toulouse had been built, became Fort Tom- 
becbe; under Spanish dominion, Fort Conf ederacion ; while 
to-day all romance is effectually snuffed out by the American 
name of Jones Bluff. 

Far away from Hobuckintopa towards the north, dim in the 
mist of a thousand hills, there lay the Hunting Ground of the 
Four Nations and their sacred place of annual feast and festi- 
val. Out of this remote and mystic region issued three great 
white streams, the Warrior that fed the Tombigbee, and the 
Coosa and Cahaba that fed the Alabama. 



10 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



" Coosa River, spelled Cosa by the Spanish chroniclers, received 
its name from the ancient Creek town Coosa," states Henry 
S. Halbert of the Department of Archives and History of 
Alabama. " This town stood upon the east bank of the river, 
and was first visited by De Soto in 1540. It was not uncommon 
in Indian America for a town to adopt a name from the speech 
of some neighboring tribe, with which they had trade relations. 
Hence the etymology of Coosa must be sought in the Choctaw 
tongue, for there were in the Choctaw country several towns 
named Coosha, properly spelled Kusha, generally with a descrip- 
tive adjective suffixed. Kusha, of which Kusa is the Muscogee 
corruption, signifies Reed brake, evidently so named from the 
extensive reed brakes that existed in ancient times near this 
famous Creek Indian town. 

" Cahaba River was very much in the debatable territory of 
the Creeks and the Choctaws. But if its etymology must be 
sought in the Choctaw tongue, I would say that it was worn 
down from (Oka aba), the first part (Oka) losing the initial 
vowel in rapidity of speech. Oka aba, signifies the River above, 
and the name may first have been given to this river by some 
Choctaw-speaking Indians living down on the lower course of 
the Alabama River." 

In this region was also a curious and dominating hill of red 
rock that was to the Indians so precious of color and quality 
that they traveled for many miles to get it, coming even from 
across the Mississippi " as far away as the sun slept." It was 
their war paint and of use to them for dyeing. Even no more 
than a slight touch upon it and the hand was turned miracu- 
lously to the very color of the rock. And down in a deep- 
forested valley, over which this mountain cast its long shadow 
in the late afternoons was another treasury of Indian com- 
merce and desire, a little bald gray bluff of some soft rock easily 
cut and molded with pointed flint stones. This the Indians 
carved out and turned into pipes, bowls, wedges, and mortars, 
so that the face of the bluff stood pitted as though scourged by 
smallpox, and the rains of many winters cut it too into a laby- 
rinth of tiny caves and wells. Over across another wider valley 
(later to be named Jones Valley), where the hill of rock cast 
short shadow in the early morning, there rolled that vast swell 
of ground called the Field of the Black Warrior, after the river 
named for the early Indian hero Tuskaloosa who had dared to 
fight the adelantado. Through all this region the men of the 
Four Nations stalked their game, and they drew down many a 
sapling on which to dry the skins of the bear and deer. 



THE PLANTING OF THE SEED 11 



Of their various annual festivals celebrated in the valley was 
that of the welcome to the Spring. Always in Alabama the 
footstep of the quick young Spring is heard before Winter has 
reached old age. And in the hill country even, the ground 
makes ready before time its delicate embroidery of flower and 
leaf. Thus in the early Indian life preparations for the welcome 
would be made in latter February. A big, fine-modeled buck 
with royal, branching antlers, a sire of the herd, would be slain 
and his hoofs and antlers polished. Then the finest grain and 
fruit of the winter planting would be packed into the body and 
the deer borne out in procession to a plain in the valley's center, 
and placed as if alive upon four tall posts. 

Precisely at sunrise of the day corresponding with them to 
our March first the worshiping Indians assembled, knelt in 
a vast circle about the consecrated deer, and lifted up a prayer 
to the sun. Their prayer was that the children of the forest be 
granted in the coming harvest just such an abundance of fruit 
and grain, fat and rich, as was there sacrificed. 

With the dawning of the nineteenth century the hill of the 
wine-red rock was found to be a mighty range of iron ore, the 
greatest ore range of the South, iron to the dark heart of it, 
while the field of Tuskaloosa, the Black Warrior, and the valleys 
of Coosa and Cahaba turned out to be pregnant with coal. The 
first blacksmiths found out these iron and coal resources and in 
time made use as they needed, taking thimble measure of the 
buried riches. The hill of red ore was early called Eed Moun- 
tain, and in the year 1871 the city named Birmingham was 
founded in the valley of limestone, called Jones Valley, between 
the magic hill of iron so treasured of the Indians and the War- 
rior Field of coal. In the valley on the other side, called Shade 
Valley, or Valley of the Shades of Death, where stands the little 
castellated limestone bluff known as the Eock House, two fur- 
naces with big rough stone jackets were put up in the Civil War 
time. The one just above the Rock House, called Irondale, is 
now farm land; the other, some miles below the Rock House, 
Oxmoor, is owned to-day by the Tennessee Coal, Iron and Rail- 
road Company. Throughout the region, savage, sweet, and deeply- 
wooded still, are sometimes found big sharp-elbowed trees, those 
that were bent, they say, when saplings, by the Indian hunters, 
and many an arrow head is to-day unearthed in this ground, known 
now to all the world as the great Birmingham District. 



CHAPTER II 



RECORDS OF EARLY GROWTH 

Trading post established at St. Stephens. History of romantic fort. Old 
Spanish blockhouse serves as depot of iron supplies. Sketches of St. 
Stephens blacksmiths, Tandy Walker and John S. Glidden. Wide im- 
portance of work. First shops at Mobile. Negro blacksmith-scholar of 
Tuskaloosa. Abandonment of St. Stephens. Mt. Vernon arsenal second 
depot of iron supplies. Founding and growth of Selma. Present day 
appearance of forsaken capitals of Alabama. Site of Fort Toulouse 
headquarters of Andrew Jackson. Folklore tale of surrender of Weather- 
ford. " Old Hickory's " commander of scouts settles in brown ore region 
of Franklin County. Group of men of War of 1812 and their descendants 
associated with coal and iron records of South. Discovery of Coosa and 
Cahaba coal fields. Original ownership and interesting anecdote of 
certain properties owned by present day corporations of Birmingham 
District. List of smiths of early Alabama. Theodore Roosevelt's word 
for the laboring man. 




GOVERNMENT factory or trading post was established 
at Fort St. Stephens by General Wilkinson in 1803 in 
order to bring about good feeling and more friendly 



commercial relations between the frontier settlers and the Creeks 
and Choctaws. The rugged bluff Hobuckintopa had been forti- 
fied in 1792 by Spanish troops under Antonia Palaas, when a 
one-company post was established, and barracks, blockhouses, 
commandant's residence, officers' quarters, church, and rectory 
were built. The blockhouses, of more robust construction than 
the quarters, were, like the church, timber frame work stuccoed 
with clay, and, like the remainder of the buildings, were roofed 
with cypress. 

When the United States boundary line was determined by 
Ellicott's Survey in 1799 General Wilkinson sent United States 
troops under Lieutenant McLeary from Natchez to take pos- 
session of the Spanish fort. The American flag was then saluted 
for the first time on Alabama soil, and the Spaniards stepped 
back, sullen, to Mobile. 

Little by little there began to rise in tlie country an ardor for 
Spain on the part of the Indians, fed from the hidden and 
treacherous sources in Mobile. It threatened indeed to become 



RECORDS OF EARLY GROWTH 13 



an overflow boding wide disaster and the drowning of every 
American interest in this quarter of the Union. General Wil- 
kinson therefore located the government factory at St. Stephens 
to serve as a dam. In a section of one of the Spanish block- 
houses used as a general store the supplies for the early smiths — » 
bar iron and blooms, many tools and implements, guns and 
ammunition — were stocked. One of the government smiths, 
Tandy Walker, was in charge of the government blacksmith 
shop placed at this point in 1801. Walker does not appear to 
have spent much time over the anvil ; he would far rather roam 
the forest. According to the early local historians, this frontier 
smith figured in many exploits and events of adventurous flavor. 
Could a Leather-stocking Tale be essayed, Tandy Walker were 
a subject to hand. Excerpts from his biography written by Rev. 
Anson West in " The History of Methodism in Alabama " must 
suffice. 

" Among all the men whom Mr. Matthew P. Sturdevant found 
in the Tombigbee country there was none of more conspicuous 
character than Tandy Walker. He was by birth a Virginian, by 
nature and experience a backwoodsman, by trade a blacksmith, 
and by acquired knowledge of the Indian language a medium of 
communication between the English-speaking and the Indian- 
speaking people. He emigrated to Tombigbee by or before the 
summer of 1803. Some have said that he went to the Tombigbee 
in 1801. 

" The United States Government was exceedingly anxious to 
civilize the Indians and improve their condition, and to this end 
endeavored to introduce among them implements of husbandry. 
In some of the treaties made with the Indian tribes the Federal 
government stipulated to furnish them blacksmiths. . . . 

. . Tandy Walker was summoned to serve on the juries of 
his country, and was employed and sent on most delicate and 
complicated missions. He was sent on expeditions in which 
caution, daring, endurance, insight, and wisdom were all in 
requisition. In 1812, upon the suggestion of Mrs. Gaines, the 
wife of George S. Gaines, the government agent, and upon the 
promptings of his own noble and generous impulses, Tandy 
Walker went to the falls of the Black Warrior River, about where 
Tuskaloosa now stands, to rescue or ransom a Mrs. Crawley who 
had been captured in Tennessee and brought to that place by a 
party of Creek warriors who had been on a visit to Tecumseh 
on the lakes. This business Mr. Walker transacted with success. 
In 1813 he went on some perilous expeditions for inspecting the 
situation and ascertaining the movements of the Creek forces 
which beleaguered the white settlements. . . . Southeast of the 



14 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



present town of New Berne and in Township eighteen, Range 
six, is a noted prairie, marked on the maps as Walker's Prairie, 
and said to have been so called for Tandy "Walker, and not far 
from that prairie, on the west side of it, Tandy Walker died in 
about 1842. His grave is there till this day." 

Tandy Walker's successor at St. Stephens was an English 
blacksmith and machinist, John S. Glidden. Glidden had served 
an apprenticeship in Devonshire and knew every detail of the 
trade. He ran away from home very early in the century that 
"he might come to see American Indians." The schooner in 
which he took passage was bound for Mobile. Here the Devon- 
shire lad got a canoe and in time arrived at Fort St. Stephens. 
This was between the years 1811 and 1812. Young Glidden 
found at St. Stephens that all the settlers were using wooden 
hinges for their gates and doors and wooden pegs for nails, so 
he seized the opportunity for making nails, hinges, and nuts. 
As soon as he acquired the government shop there "he made 
any number of plows, hoes, dog-irons, pot racks, fire shovels 
and tongs, and everything in the way of iron needed for building 
houses, wagons, buggies, carriages, now turned out by machinery. 
He also made cowbells, a new thing." 1 Mules and horses were 
brought to the shop at St. Stephens from everywhere within a 
hundred-mile radius, and guns were brought for repair from all 
quarters of Mississippi Territory. In 1814 young Glidden en- 
listed in Andrew Jackson's mounted brigade and fought in the 
battle of New Orleans. After the victory he returned to his 
smithy at St. Stephens. 

By the year 1816 there were fifteen hundred inhabitants at 
St. Stephens. Much money was invested, diversified industries 
were set afoot, and the place became, at the time of the division 
of the territory from Mississippi, the most thriving settlement 
of the English-speaking colonists in the Alabama country. " St. 
Stephens began a new era in our national history," Hamilton 
says; "she has stood for things that come nearer our hearts 
to-day." The little territorial capitol was, however, " doomed to 
early desolation." The meeting rivers, Alabama and Tombig- 
bee, breathed death-dealing mists upon Hobuckintopa. There 
was never-ending fear of Indian massacre. The blacksmith 
Glidden said that in addition to his work by day he was forced 

1 Data obtained from John J. Mitchell of Birmingham, Ala., nephew of 
John S. Glidden. 



RECORDS OF EARLY GROWTH 15 



to mount guard by night to keep the Indians off. He saw too 
much of American Indians at length. 

Mobile being by this time opened up to the Americans by 
General Wilkinson, Glidden felt that the makings of a town 
were more certain at that point and safety more assured. He 
therefore packed his tools in a dugout and paddled down river 
to the Spanish town. He put up a smithy near the location 
where the Battle House was afterwards built on Old St. Francis 
Street and grew up along with the town. Buying a slave, he 
trained him to the business and gradually developed a big trade, 
so that by the thirties Glidden owned considerable property and 
a large number of negroes, each of whom was a well trained 
machinist. It was therefore, according to all accounts, John S. 
Glidden who furnished the State with the first skilled negro 
blacksmiths. Sir Charles Lyell, in his " Travels in the United 
States," in 1846, mentions a well known character of Alabama, 
a negro blacksmith, Ellis by name, "who had taught himself 
Greek and Latin," and the English traveler continues, " He is 
now acquiring Hebrew, and I was sorry to hear the Presbyterians 
contemplate sending him as a missionary to Liberia." 

Glidden carried on a big amount of plow and dray work in 
Mobile. He also made the iron work used on the first steam- 
boats that plowed the waters of the Alabama and Tombigbee. 
The English workman seems to have become a thorough-going 
American patriot. " He loved a picture he had of Old Hickory 
up to the last," relates his nephew, who joined the old smith in 
1856 ; "he kept it hanging in his office all the time. I wish I 
had that picture now myself ! " 1 

When the Civil War broke out Glidden's young nephew en- 
listed in the twenty-first Alabama. " Too hasty, boy," old Glidden 
said, "you're too hasty. No call for your doing that." But 
it was in the blood! When Mitchell's regiment was stationed 
at Fort Morgan, he was detailed to the State armory to make 
gun locks. He was found to be so expert that his commander 
said, "You're worth any three men in the field," and trans- 
ferred him to the Confederate Navy Yard at Selma. At the 

1 An incident of the battle of New Orleans related frequently by Glid- 
den was : " One of the men there who owned a large number of the cotton 
bales which Old Hickory ordered for breast works kicked about giving 
them up. Old Hickory had him marched up before him. ' Ye don't want 
to loan us yer cotton bales, eh? ' and he got him a gun. ' By the Eternal,' 
he says, ' stand up there an' defend 'em ! ' and he made the cotton man 
fight, too, along with us all." 



16 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



surrender Mitchell was detailed to Mobile to repair the Morgan. 
She had been shot on her water line. " I was the last blacksmith 
in the Confederate service to put out my fire," says Mitchell. 
He packed his tools then and went back to his uncle who died 
soon afterwards at a good old age. 

St. Stephens was gradually deserted by all her tradesmen 
and workmen, for the same reason that John Glidden left. One 
by one its houses were abandoned and its citizens departed. 
Destruction roamed about it, wild-eyed. Its forsaken homes were 
set on fire by the very people yet living near them, " to see them 
burn," says Mary Welsh in her chronicles. Before long only 
the cellars and broken foundations, toppled chimneys and ruins 
of several hundred houses, remained with the rows of trees grown 
big-bodied and mighty along the streets leading to the river. Once 
there had been a theater there. Balls, too, had been given there, but 
Miss Welsh tells us there was never a church, the Spanish chapel 
having been turned into a skin-house, and only on rare occa- 
sions was there a minister. To certain of the more fanatic of 
the early disciples of Lorenzo Dow, St. Stephens was as a Sodom 
and Gomorrah, was asserted, indeed, " to be doomed on account 
of the godlessness of its citizens." And as testimony, forsooth, 
the ballroom and the little theater spoke! Maligned little 
French dreams ! 

Nevertheless, as Peter Hamilton concludes, "St. Stephens did 
not die; she was translated. Her people, her trade, her very 
houses moved down below Ellicott's stone to the new frontier. 
Mobile did not outstrip her. St. Stephens took possession of 
Mobile and Americanized her. That Mobile is not now a stag- 
nant Latin town she owes to St. Stephens." 

The little depot of iron supplies, tools, guns, and ammunition, 
was eventually transferred to Mt. Vernon arsenal. This point 
was originally the landing place of Fort Stoddard on the Tom- 
bigbee. This fort, which was merely a stockade with one bastion, 
had been constructed in 1799 by General Wilkinson's order as, in 
a sense, a bulwark to Fort St. Stephens when that position was 
occupied by the United States troops. Stoddard was garrisoned 
by two companies of United States infantry, and Captain Shaum- 
berg was detailed by Wilkinson to act as commandant. It is 
of Captain Shaumberg that the incident of the " Linder- Johnson 
wedding" is related. In the absence of ministers in the land, 
one Christmas night there came to the post a runaway pair full 



RECORDS OF EARLY GROWTH 17 



of faith in the power of the United States Army. The captain, 
nothing loth to wear that power, stood up and married the pair, 
saying : " I, Captain Shaumberg of the Second Regiment of the 
United States Army and Commandant of Fort Stoddard, do 
here pronounce you man and wife. Go home, behave yourselves, 
multiply and replenish the Tensaw country." And the two were 
avowed "the best married folk in that region." 

As early as November, 1811, a cantonment was established at 
Mt. Vernon Landing by Colonel Thomas H. Cushing of the 
Second United States Infantry, who, under General Wilkinson's 
orders, marched with his troops to protect the Spaniards, on this 
peculiar occasion, from American attack. The cantonment was 
discontinued at the close of the War of 1812. An arsenal was 
established by the United States Government on the first day of 
the New Year, 1829, on the site of this old cantonment. 1 Lieu- 
tenant Walter Smith of the First Artillery acted as commanding 
officer, and under his direction there were built storehouses, 
workshops, barracks, and officers' quarters. Lieutenant Smith 
retained command until 1832. Between 1835 and 1836 twelve 
hundred young men were mustered in at this point to fight in 
the Creek War under General Jessup. All these volunteers 
later received land warrants for their service. Among these 
young men was John W. Cobb, whose son, R. W. Cobb, became 
Governor of Alabama and was at one time interested in a minor 
way in the iron business. 

Mt. Vernon was occupied as a post for United States Artillery 
men continuously from 1829 until the Civil War. The point 
served also as an American port of entry and headquarters of 
the first Court of Admiralty held in the Gulf States. During 
the Mexican War it was used as a general depot of supplies for 
the troops in the field, and at the close of hostilities a number of 
Mexican guns and ordnance of curious old Spanish make were 
brought to the place and young Captain Gorgas, later chief of 
ordnance of the Confederacy, was detailed in command. On 
January 4, 1861, Mt. Vernon was seized by volunteer Confeder- 
ate troops from Mobile acting under instructions from Governor 
Moore. Here the Thirty-sixth Alabama Infantry Regiment was 
organized and equipped. After the fall of New Orleans the 
machinery and all the paraphernalia for iron making at Mt. 

1 From an historical compilation made for this work from the official, 
records on file in the War Department and from scattered data in various 
of the Alabama histories. 

2 



18 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



Vernon were removed to Selma as will be related in subsequent 
chapters on the war period. Mt. Vernon was retained as a minor 
storehouse and point for supplies, but its sword was broken, its 
connection with affairs military permanently closed. Years later 
in the old barracks there, Geronimo and his band of Apaches 
were held in captivity. Afterwards the place became what it 
now is, a hospital for the negro insane. 

An incident of particular interest occurring shortly after St. 
Stephens was made the capital of Alabama Territory was a cer- 
tain real estate venture of William Rufus King who later became 
vice-president of the United States. Mr. King's home was in 
the little town of Cahaba, a settlement located on the site of the 
Indian village Piachee where, according to tradition, De Soto 
and Tuskaloosa had first met. After several years' absence 
abroad where Mr. King as a member of the United States Em- 
bassy Corps had been stationed at Naples and at Saint Peters- 
burg, he returned to his Alabama home about 1818. One of 
his various enterprises was the formation of a land company to 
build a city. He bought a tract of land some three miles square, 
ten miles from Cahaba, and on higher ground, one hundred feet 
above the Alabama River. This point, known at the time as 
Moore's Bluff, was formerly called High Soapstone Bluff. 1 
It was settled in 1810 by Isaac Moore. Considering the place 
as an excellent site for a town, Mr. King staked out the 
little plateau into lots for sale. Being of a scholarly turn of 
mind and just at that time profoundly enthusiastic over the poems 
of Ossian, he chose the name Selma out of this book for his little 
town. Once the ancient capital of Fingal, the most cherished 
home of the old blind bard — maker of the songs of Selma that 
haunt old Scotland deep and far — and having, moreover, the 
Greek meaning of seat or throne, to its founder's mind, it was a 
fair godmother for a city in the new world. St. Stephens as a 
capital was as short-lived as Alabama Territory itself, and Cahaba 
became the first capital of the State. In a short space of time the 
little river town in its neighborhood was made a seat of many 
industries. In later decades it supplanted Mt. Vernon and 
Mobile as a basis of iron supplies for Alabama and was made 
the main headquarters of the State for smiths, artisans, ma- 
chinists, foundry men, mechanics, coal traders, and professional 
men as well as cotton men. 

1 Mrs. T. G. Kenan of Birmingham, granddaughter of Isaac Moore. 



RECORDS OF EARLY GROWTH 19 



By main headquarters it is not meant to suggest that big 
outlines for the coal and iron business were drawn by Selma, 
for that has been the function of Birmingham. But Selma was 
large in comparison with its predecessors and sufficiently im- 
portant in the way of iron works to call upon itself early in the 
sixties the sobriquet of the " Pittsburg of the South." It was 
during the war time, as will be detailed, that owing to the loca- 
tion at Selma of the Confederate Arsenal and Naval Foundry, 
Senator King's little town became the bulFs-eye of the target, and 
its scope and value were attested to in the records of the military. 

Of the early State Capital, Cahaba, there are but ruins at the 
present time, — a few solitary marble pillars, a statue near an 
artesian well, and one or two roofless houses with windows like 
blind eyes staring in the wilderness. And at old Fort St. 
Stephens there is nothing to-day. The bluff Hobuckintopa has 
reverted indeed to its tragic Choctaw sense. A century's growth 
has drawn over it the curtain of the wild forest. No one now 
living remembers the place but as a ruin. Her very cemetery 
has become obliterated ; " her glory has departed. Pompeii is 
better preserved and more remains of Nineveh than of the capital 
of territorial Alabama." 1 

It was at the original quarters of the frontier smiths, Fort 
Toulouse, that, after the worst of the Creek business was over 
and done with, Andrew Jackson and his men pitched their 
tents. They rebuilt the ruined garrison; ran up the stars and 
stripes, and, in an enthrallment perfectly natural, surely justifi- 
able, Andrew Jackson changed its name from French to good 
American, and called it Fort Jackson, in honor of himself. 

Then came to pass that which is accounted the most tre- 
mendous happening of the Creek War — the surrender of Lamo- 
chattee, the Red Eagle, William Weatherford, that Muscogee 
half-breed chief, termed by Alexander Meek " the key and corner 
stone of the Creek Confederation." The power of this Confedera- 
tion had now been broken by J ackson. 

Weatherford's braves had been killed to a man. The story of 
his surrender, like the naming of the great rivers, Tombigbee 
and Alabama, is one of the hearth tales of the people of the 
South. Fact and fiction are entangled ; its precise stuff is not 
fixed to the letter. It matters little, however, so the spirit stirs 
and its early, fine, sharp flavor keeps. One discerns here a simple, 

1 Peter J. Hamilton. 



20 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



quite straightforward business such as Jackson has handed down 
as heritage to the men of Alabama and Tennessee, and to all the 
world beside. 

This Scotch-Indian fellow, Weatherford, was keen for his 
blasphemed Indian gods and his outraged Indian rights. At 
daybreak he rode up to Fort Toulouse, — and he could ride, they 
tell, — a deer, fresh slain, hung over his saddle horn. He was 
full of concern for his dead tribe's women and children, who 
crouched naked in the stripped and blackened forest. Straight 
up to headquarters tent he rode, near to the broken old French 
guns where Andrew Jackson brooded. 

"Is this General Jackson?" he asks: "I'm Bill Weather- 
ford." 

" I 'm glad to see you, Mr. Weatherford," and Andrew Jackson 
rises frankly to salute the man that has been fighting him in such 
way as he liked to fight — in the open, with blood and bone, sun 
up to sun down, moon to moon. 

" General J ackson, I 've come in to surrender." 

"I'm glad to hear that, Mr. Weatherford." A soldier near 
the marquee reports J ackson punctilious on the " Mr." 

" I 'm done fighting," and Bill Weatherford faces Jackson 
squarely. " My powder 's gone. My men are killed. I can't 
call back the dead. Our women and children have got to be 
looked to. If I could fight you any more, I 'd do it ! " 

" Kill him ! " the cry fires the camp ; the guns get primed. 

" Halt ! " commands Andrew Jackson, a war dog himself like 
Weatherford. " Who 'd shoot a man like this would rob the dead ! 
Put down y'r guns ! " The camp is silenced. Bill Weatherford 
rides away. But the friendship thus begun on that day had no 
end in life. 

The peace treaty of 1816 was subsequently gotten up, signed 
and sealed. The Creeks were permanently cut off from Spanish 
connection and conspiracies. One half • of the middle area of 
Alabama was thrown wide open to American settlement. Immi- 
gration from Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia, and the Carolinas at 
once began to roll in like the sweep of a high tide. Thus, with 
Andy Jackson at the helm and James Wilkinson first mate, the 
country was soon placed in the way of being made Alabama 
Territory. 

Of the men with Jackson, mustered out just after this affair, 
Major William Russell was one. He was Jackson's commander 



RECORDS OF EARLY GROWTH 



21 



of scouts ; had seen service with him through Talladega, Emuck- 
fau, and Tohopeka, and was, like his chief, a Tennessean. The 
major settled up in the hill country, among the Chickasaws, 
away to the north of the Tombigbee, in the county later known as 
Franklin. He got land from the Indians in a long rich valley. 
Following Jackson's little custom, which, like his grit, seems to 
have been catching among his men, the major named the coun- 
try Russells Valley, and the nucleus of the market town he 
started there he called Russellville. His great lands skirted 
the edge of the Warrior coal field, and over them, miles on miles, 
one rode fetlock deep in iron ore. In this region mines are owned 
at the present time by the Sloss-Sheffield Steel and Iron Com- 
pany and others. It was. at the western terminus of Russells 
Valley that the first blast furnace of Alabama was put up, some 
years following the earliest settlement, and the first pig iron in 
the State manufactured. 

Among the officers and men of the War of 1812, whose de- 
scendents became identified, in more or less degree, with the 
coal, iron, and railroad makings of the State and the upbuilding 
of the Birmingham District, were Joseph Rogers Underwood, 
Martin Tutwiler, Thomas C. Rhodes, Major Cowan, Luke Pryor, 
J ames W. Sloss, J acob Stroup, J ohn R. Gamble, Mathias Turner, 
John S. Glidden, John Hanby, Joseph H. Posey, and James, 
Edward, Achilles, and Jonathan. Mahan. 

Joseph R. Underwood's grandsons were William T. Under- 
wood, and Oscar W. Underwood, United States Representative of 
Alabama. W. T. Underwood established the Mary Pratt Fur- 
nace Company in conjunction with De Bardeleben in 1883. 
Martin Tutwiler served in Virginia in General Cockes' com- 
mand. His grandson, Edward Magruder Tutwiler, organized in 
1893 the Tutwiler Coal, Coke, and Iron Company, now in- 
corporated in the Birmingham Coal and Iron Company. Thomas 
C. Rhodes was Andrew Jackson's captain of engineers. The 
night after the battle of New Orleans he slept in the tent with 
Old Hickory. 

Captain Rhodes' grandson, Rufus Napoleon Rhodes, founded 
the Birmingham News, of which sheet he is owner and editor 
to-day, and has been identified for over twenty-one years with 
affairs of the Birmingham District. Major Cowan was another 
of Jackson's officers. Cowan City, the Cowan Division of the 
Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company's properties, lo- 



22 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



cated in Franklin County, Tennessee, is named for him. Luke 
Pryor became one of the strong advocates for railroad construc- 
tion in the South and represented Alabama in the United 
States Senate. J ames Sloss's son, James W. Sloss, was the second 
president of the South and North Railroad, and was one of the 
famous group, Milner, Sloss, Aldrich, and De Bardeleben, who 
established the first permanent and extensive industrial work- 
ings of the Birmingham District in the eighteen-seventies and 
early eighteen-eighties. The companies with which Colonel 
Sloss was associated, the Oxmoor or Eureka Furnace Company 
and the Pratt Coal and Coke Company, are owned at the pres- 
ent time by the Tennessee Company; while the colonel's indi- 
vidual iron works, the Sloss Furnace Company, is parent stock 
of the Sloss-Sheffield Steel and Iron Company. Jacob Stroup 
was the son of a colonial gunmaker, David Stroup. His son, 
Moses Stroup, built and operated furnaces in Cherokee and 
Tuskaloosa counties. Tannehill, once his property, is owned 
to-day by the Republic Iron and Steel Company. 

John R. Gamble was the son of an Irish soldier of the Revo- 
lution, Robert Gamble, who was present at the surrender of 
Cornwallis. J. R. Gamble, mustered out of Jackson's army 
shortly after Weatherford's surrender, settled later in the wilds 
of Shelby County near what is Calera to-day, and married there. 
When the place began to show signs of settlement, he struck out 
for more woods. He took his family and household goods in a 
wagon across country up into what became Walker County. His 
son, Franklin Asbury Gamble, became, in time, county adminis- 
trator, and later, judge of the Probate Court. He saw war ser- 
vice for the Confederacy and was the originator of the Jasper 
Land Company and stockholder and director in that concern 
and he originally owned the coal properties known to-day as the 
Gamble mines, operated by Pratt Consolidated Coal Company. 
Mathias Turner's son, James, became associated a generation 
later in the coal business of Walker County with Captain F. A. 
Musgrove. 

As to those others of Jackson's fighting crew: Glidden's 
record has been detailed in relation to the St. Stephens work. 
John Hanby and Joseph Posey settled in the hill country 
near the locality known to-day as Blount Springs and Mount 
Pinson, where they put up blacksmith shops. Hanby was by 
birth a Virginian, born in Henry County, 1774, and was brought 



RECORDS OF EARLY GROWTH 23 



up to follow the machinist's trade. Early in the century he 
emigrated, as so many Virginians did, to Fayetteville, Tennes- 
see, and on Jackson's call for men in 1812, enlisted. There 
was a Gabriel Hanby elected delegate from the county of 
Blount to the Constitutional Convention at Huntsville in 1819. 
John Hanby following his trade right along, made what the 
young country needed and called for most at that time : knives, 
rifles, guns, and pistols, and brought up his sons to the business. 
He prospected around considerably and found a pocket of brown 
ore in the neighborhood of Oneonta. This rich find was years 
later acquired by Major Tom Peters, and sold by him to Henry 
F. De Bardeleben and Colonel Sloss, and named Champion. It 
was worked under contract for several years by J. W. Worthing- 
ton and Company. It is still owned by the Sloss-Sheffield Steel 
and Iron Company and Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad 
Company. Further operations of the Hanby family in the 
early coal mining done in the Warrior field are recorded in 
another chapter. The present superintendent of the Sloss Mines 
at Bessemer is Captain John David Hanby, great-grandson of 
the old machinist of Blount County. 

The three Mahan boys and their comrades, following the good 
fight at New Orleans, split up into small crowds, " and," writes 
Kevin Cunningham Mahan for this- record, " rather than tackle 
the job of running boats on the Mississippi up stream, they 
decided to follow the not any too safe Indian trails, or just strike 
out right up through the woods of Mississippi Territory in the 
direction the wild geese flew in the spring of the year." 

One party of these soldiers was composed of eighteen members 
under the leadership of Major Jonathan Mahan, who was their 
" bell wether," so to speak. " Among them," states Mr. Mahan, 
"were James and Edward Mahan, and Linzeys, Fanchers, Mas- 
singales, Ragans, and Smiths. They made a compromise of 
trails and directions, and, after following what was known as the 
Tuskaloosa trail, took to the woods. When they reached the 
confluence of three creeks, those known to-day as Mahan, Shoals, 
and Mayberry creeks, which together make the Little Cahaba 
River, they found here an Indian camp well stocked with swine, 
horses, cows, and corn; also, says rumor, there were here a 
goodly number of comely Indian maidens, and not too great a 
number of bucks with highly developed fighting proclivities." 
Be that as it may, twelve of the soldiers of fortune, like Ulys- 



24 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



ses of old, here laid down their arms, cast in their lots with the 
Indians and were not again heard of. The other six, together 
with a few Indians and traders, continued on their way to the 
Cumberland Valley for their wives and children. Returning 
with a small gathering of friends, they founded on the fertile 
site of the little Indian village the settlement later known as 
Brierfield, and gave to the broad-flowing creek the name of 
Mahan's Creek. 

The hills ranging far and wide across country were deep then 
in long-leaf yellow pine, that rich growth of early Cahaba 
County, which has since given place to heavy marches of black- 
jack, hickory and chestnut trees, and clambering muscadine. 
The banks of Mahan's Creek droop with live oaks, cedar, and 
sycamore, yellow jessamine, and wild honeysuckle, yellow and 
red. Springs, at least forty in number, feed its course all along 
its way. Little wonder that it was so favored a place of the 
Indians. And here was the neighborhood of some of the earliest 
mills and forges of Alabama. 

The foundations of the industry in these counties of Bibb 
and Shelby were thus laid as far back as 1815 by the Mahan 
boys. They were sons of old Major John Mahan, an officer of a 
Maryland regiment in action in the Revolution. Always a fight- 
ing clan, Irish to the core, they carried a gay spirit, like flag 
and drum, into the smoky hills and rough pioneer times of early 
Alabama. The old major emigrated to Tennessee at the close 
of the eighteenth century with his wife (who was close kin to 
General Winfield Scott) and their four boys. The blacksmith 
and wagon making business being at that period lucrative and 
useful in the growing communities, all four of the sons were 
bred to it. At the first chance for a fight under Andy Jackson, 
however, they quit for the time being. When they settled at 
length in the Alabama country, the old major came down with 
them. He died a few years later at a good old age. His grave 
is in the old hill cemetery on what is Joseph R. Smith's farm 
to-day, the precise site of the old Indian village and the early 
Mahan settlement. Major Mahan's name is recorded there on 
the lichened gravestone, and 1820, the year of his death. 

The group of pioneers with their families lived first in wig- 
wams, then later built log houses. All over this section of 
Bibb County are these log houses built in old Tennessee style 
and long abandoned. 



Old Mahan Homestead 
Bibb County 



Colonel Tannehill's Old House 
Tuskaloosa County 




Public Road neae Brdsrfield Rolling 
Mills, Bibb County 



In the Blue C ah aba Hills on the Road 
to Beighthope, Bibb County 



RECORDS OF EARLY GROWTH 25 



The Mahan boys and the others started mills, limekilns, 
road building, farming, and wagon making. They sold wagons 
to the Government and contracted to help move out the Indians. 
In the long western procession of the tribes that so soon followed, 
the Mahan make of wagons led the van. Mrs. Mahan relates 
how Edward Mahan, her father-in-law, used to tell about seeing 
"whole rooms packed with beads" which the Federal Govern- 
ment Agents gave to the Indians for their lands instead of the 
money they were authorized by the administration to give in 
square deal. The Mahans also did considerable railroad con- 
struction work and trestle building through south Alabama. 
Jesse Mahan, a son of Edward Mahan, became in after years 
something of a figure in the political affairs of this section. He 
was also a Union man. When pressed at length into the service 
of the Confederate Government, he took his slaves and conducted 
the salt works near Mobile. Later made iron inspector by the 
Confederate Government with the rank and pay of major, he 
had also charge of the timber and wagon department, shipped 
timber to Selma from his sawmill on Mahan's Creek, and do- 
nated several acres of his property on the Creek for the Confed- 
erate rolling mill at Brierfield. He served as a member of the 
Constitutional Convention during the reconstruction times, and 
as State senator from Bibb in 1868. His father and uncles 
built the first flat and keel boats ever floated on Cahaba River to 
carry coal. They surveyed the county lines and removed the 
county seat from Randolph to Centreville. 

The discovery and original crude workings of various of the 
mines in the Coosa and Cahaba coal fields, later to be developed 
by Truman H. Aldrich, Henry F. De Bardeleben and their 
associates, is directly traceable to this little group of pioneer 
settlers and those following them. 

Other smiths of territorial Alabama, contemporary with these 
men of Jackson's brigades, were Joshua Callahan, Benjamin 
Burns, Hugh Finley, Fleming B. White, and William B. Forrest. 

Joshua Callahan traded for land from the Indians in Blount 
County. Settling there in 1816 he farmed and carried on his 
trade till his days were done. Benjamin Burns, whose father 
was one of the early patriots killed at Bunker Hill, got public 
land in St. Clair and brought up his son, Theodore Burns, to 
the blacksmith trade. This Theodore married a daughter of 
another of Jackson's fighting crew, and settled among the Indians 



26 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



in Talladega County in the thirties. He followed his trade 
for thirty-five years, seeing the iron business of Talladega rise 
and fall. He saw war service for the Confederacy, out of which 
he emerged, stripped of all his possessions, with the exception of 
one old cavalry mare and a few extra horseshoes. With this 
stock in trade he set up shop again and worked till his days 
were done. Hugh Finley put up a smithy at Tuscumbia in 
1815. Fleming B. White of Madison County had been carried 
into Alabama from Virginia in 1806 when he was five years 
old, and was toted by his half brother, Samuel Smither, on a 
pack mule across the Great Smoky Range. When the boy grew 
up he operated a tannery, supplying the whole north country 
with harness, shoes, and saddles. His son, W. S. White, fought 
for the Confederacy at Gettysburg and settled later in Lime- 
stone County. The blacksmith, William Forrest, lived in Ten- 
nessee not far from the northern border of Alabama, up among 
the giant cedars of the Duck River County. It was he who was 
the father of General Nathan Bedford Forrest, C. S. A. That 
boy, kith and kin to Bill Weatherford and Andrew Jackson, 
was bred out of the stuff of these rude and uncivil times. Son 
of a blacksmith, he was the South's one born workman general. 
The place he was bred in was a smithy. It squatted alongside 
the public road on which stuck yet above ground the stumps of 
trees — it was so fresh blazed — " with bellows, forge, and anvil, 
tongs and the other simple paraphernalia of an artisan in iron." 1 
From that time to this there have been just such shops, all 
alike breeding strong workmen, and leaving certain significant 
and permanent results. A word or two by Theodore Roosevelt 
touches on this matter. Says he : " The great nations of medie- 
val times who left such marvelous works of architecture and art 
behind them were able to do so because they educated alike the 
brain and hands of the craftsman. We, too, in our turn, must 
show that we understand the law which decrees that a people 
which loses physical address invariably deteriorates; so that our 
people shall understand that the good carpenter, the good black- 
smith, the good mechanic, the good farmer really fill the most 
important positions in our land; and that it is an evil thing 
for them and for the nation to have their sons and daughters 
forsake the work which, if well and efficiently performed, means 
more than any other work for our people as a whole." 

1 John Allen Wyeth. 



CHAPTER III 



FIRST FURNACE AND FIRST RAILROAD 

The Story of Old Cedar Creek furnace. Early settlement of Russells Val- 
ley. Description of old ways and means of iron making. Method of 
getting ore. Disposition of product. Pioneer furnacemen and settlers 
of Franklin County. Folklore of the region. Records of State geologists. 
Present-day appearance of furnace site. Operations of Sloss-Sheffield 
Steel and Iron Company, and Sheffield Coal and Iron Company. Indus- 
trial enterprises contemporary with Cedar Creek furnace. Progressive 
spirit of first governor of Alabama. Survey of early times and condi- 
tions. Construction of old Decatur and Tuscumbia Railroad. Sketch 
of David Hubbard. Early means of transportation. Pioneer railroads 
of State. 

IT was up in the Chickasaw country in the northwestern 
region of Alabama Territory, county of Franklin, that the 
first blast furnace of Alabama was put up in the year 1818, 
and pig iron making on a commercial basis begun. There had 
been, as has been mentioned, forge and smithy at Indian village, 
Spanish fort, Federal trading post, and territorial colony; but 
the frontier smith wrought out of imported blooms and bars for 
the most part, and little use was made of Alabama iron ore. 
Concerning Old Cedar Creek, which was the name given this first 
blast furnace, all facts have, after much searching, become dis- 
tinctly outlined. 

That precise locality opened up to settlement by Jackson's 
scout, Major Russell, was incorporated in part of the huge land 
grant of the Chickasaw Cession of 1818, out of which the county 
of Franklin was formed. Shortly after the organization of this 
county, an iron maker, one Joseph Heslip, took up ground in 
Russells Valley, some three miles from Russellville, and es- 
tablished there the first iron works of Alabama. According to 
the records in the land office at Montgomery, "Joseph Heslip 
bought the SE% — 10 — 7 — 12 from the Government, No- 
vember 11th, 1818, at two dollars per acre/' It is also recorded 
that Anthony Winston and John Hamilton bought land at the 
same time in this neighborhood. As soon as his grant was 
recorded Heslip selected a furnace site on the horseshoe bend of 



28 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



Cedar Creek where the water had a sharp, quick flow, and, accord- 
ing to T. L. Fossick, he straightway bought materials and began 
construction work. His plant, rapidly completed, comprised not 
only the rough stone jacket-clad furnace, but also a Catalan forge, 
a foundry, and a crude sort of rolling mill, together with ware- 
houses and tenants' shacks. 

Cedar Creek furnace itself, taking front rank in the series 
of pioneer iron works of the State, was a perfectly simple affair, 
very like a limekiln in appearance, and not different from the 
other furnaces of colonial times, several of which were in blast 
at that period in the near neighborhood of Tennessee. It was 
after the fashion of the blast furnaces of ancient Briton, and 
was heavy, stolid, massive, a heritage of the Roman iron makers 
which was carried over seas to the American colonies, intact and 
centuries old. The illustrations of Brighthope and Tannehill are 
examples. 

To quote L. K. Pounders : 

" This furnace was rudely constructed and very unlike those 
of to-day. It must have been lined inside with some kind of fire- 
proof bricks, but certain it is that the greater portion of the 
building was limestone rock quarried from the bluffs near by. The 
furnace proper was somewhat conical in shape, being from twenty- 
five to thirty feet in diameter at the base and narrowing at a 
height of about twenty-five feet into a short smokestack. The 
furnace and smokestack together were not over fifty feet high. 
The blast which heated the furnace was supplied by a kind of 
bellows run by water power. One of the most interesting features 
of the plant was a large forge hammer weighing five hundred 
pounds. It was lifted by water power and let fall by its own 
weight upon the piece of iron to be forged, thus doing the work 
that is now done by the rolling mills/' 

This huge hammer also served to break up any extra hard 
lumps or boulders of the iron ore which were too bulky for use 
in the furnace. Miss Liza Ann Hamilton and Mrs. J ane Sherrill, 
of Franklin County, to this day distinctly recall hearing, long 
ago, the incessant throb and ring of the big hammer, sounding 
day and night over the country for miles and miles. 

Joseph Heslip obtained his ore from the neighboring hills. 
"This was all surface ore," says Charles E. Wilson, "which 
the farmers were glad to give the furnace people to get it out of 
the way for tilling the soil." This particular quality of iron ore, 
known as the Lafayette formation limonite is, according to Dr. 



FIRST FURNACE AND FIRST RAILROAD 29 



Eugene A. Smith, the principal ore of the northern part of the 
State, in the counties of Colbert, Franklin, Marion, and Lamar. 
"Loose bowlders scattered over the surface supplied the first 
furnace," says Dr. Smith; "many of the deposits are on high 
ground and are comparatively shallow, as shown by the diggings 
extending down to the underlying bedded rocks. Other deposits 
in lower situation are fifty and sixty feet and more in depth. 
The ore is mostly a dark-colored compact ore, but in some of the 
deposits it is of concretionary nature, with red and yellow ochres 
filling the cavities." 

The State geologist likewise confirms the fact of a Catalan 
forge in this Cedar Creek locality, " for," he says, " lumps of 
malleable, as well as cast iron, are to be found around the old 
furnace ruins." L. K. Pounders observes : " Great pits may be 
found, from which the ore was taken and hauled one or two miles 
on an ox wagon to the furnace. The flux used was taken from the 
quarries of limestone with which the country abounds. It may 
be said, by the way, that it is only about one-half mile from this 
old furnace place to Rockwood, Alabama, from which latter place 
T. L. Fossick and Company are daily shipping this same lime- 
stone to the furnaces at Sheffield. Analysis of this stone shows 
as high as ninety-eight per cent of pure calcium carbonate." 

The fuel used was cedar charcoal exclusively. Thousands of 
trees of the finest cedar were destroyed. Heslip purchased a 
large portion of this timber from another pioneer settler, W. S. 
Jones, the son of Colonel T. S. Jones, an officer of the American 
Revolution. W. S. Jones settled in Russells Valley with his young 
wife the year the State was admitted to the Union, and took up a 
tract of seventeen hundred acres. After his crops were laid by 
he used to take a crew of some fifteen or twenty negro men and 
set out to cut and cord wood for Cedar Creek furnace. " Timber 
was plentiful," says L. K. Pounders, "and this was cut and heaped 
together in large kilns and kept burning for days, care being 
taken not to let a draft to the burning wood which, in this 
smothered condition, soon burnt into a coal. In this way the 
fuel was prepared. As charcoal will not decay for ages the places 
where these kilns were burned still show unmistakable signs of 
the early manufacturer. Sometimes a whole acre will be as 
black as charcoal can make it." 

There seems to have been large demand for the iron from the 
very day the furnace went into blast. Heslip took into partnership 



30 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



two men, a certain Mr. Burnsides and one Gillespie. They em- 
ployed a force of workmen and planned what was, at that period, 
a considerable business. To start with, they supplied bar iron 
for the use of the blacksmiths and forge builders throughout 
north Alabama and made castings out of which were fashioned 
hollow ware and agricultural implements. As it was before the 
day of stoves in Alabama, this pioneer furnace supplied the 
homesteads with old-time cooking vessels, iron pots, and cranes. 
The hollow ware of Cedar Creek furnace therefore became widely 
known. 

" The product was hauled in wagons to South Florence," says 
Charles E. Wilson, "when the river was in good boating con- 
dition. But when the water was low it was hauled to Chickasaw 
or to Riverton, the distance to Chickasaw being about twenty-six 
miles, and to Riverton thirty-five miles." 

Mr. Wilson's father, Brice Wilson, came across as a boy from 
Scotland, settled in Franklin County in 1819, and started a store 
at Russellville. Long years afterward he used to tell his own 
boys, who are to-day prosperous merchants of that locality, how, 
near the close of 1820, a plague crept over Old Cedar Creek Iron 
Works. It was a wasting sickness of a mysterious and fatal 
nature, and the workmen of the furnace, their wives, and 
children died like cattle. All day long and all night, too, graves 
were dug and carpenters made coffins. Brice Wilson used to tell 
how he could hear from far off the sound of the hammering, 
in the middle of the night, and how he would lie awake and 
hear them, hour after hour, nailing up the dead. For two 
years desolation brooded over Cedar Creek furnace and the 
place became utterly forsaken. Shrouded as in a winding sheet, 
it was avoided as haunted ground which stirred with malignant 
spirits and nameless terror. Joseph Heslip, Burnsides, and 
Gillespie disappear from coal and iron records from this time. 

At length, late in 1822, one Aaron Wells, a furnaceman from 
Fayetteville, Lincoln County, Tennessee, took up the aban- 
doned property. He came with his daughter to live at the 
haunted ground and, reviving operations, struck daylight out of 
the gloom. He took into partnership a young man, Dobbins, 
who married his daughter, and later there were associated with 
the firm two other iron makers, Buck and Hale. For four years 
the men worked along steadily, as best they could without capital. 
But the handicaps were hundred-armed. Pushed to the wall, 



FIRST FURNACE AND FIRST RAILROAD 31 



Aaron Wells at length turned back to Tennessee. One gracious 
incident invests the name of this old furnaceman with a certain 
scholarly charm, for to his little granddaughter, born at the 
furnace there in a cottage overleaning the running water, he 
gave the name of Narcissus. 

The iron works later passed into the ownership of another 
Tennessean, Dr. Robert Napier of Nashville, which accounts for 
the name " Old Napier Furnace," found in certain records. Con- 
nected with this new management, dating from 1826 to 1832, 
(some hold to 1836) were two other men, Chandler and Peel. 
Capital was put into the enterprise, improvements followed, and 
a pronounced period of commercial success resulted. An excellent 
grade of charcoal pig iron was turned out. According to various 
authorities the operations at Cedar Creek were at length aban- 
doned on account of the expense of ore getting and the difficulties 
of transportation, but Miss Hamilton explicitly states that the 
abandonment followed the collapse of the stone stack; that one 
night, early in the eighteen-thirties, the whole thing suddenly 
caved in, and put an end to the business. Never again did hand, 
even the hand of Tennessean, dare attempt the rebuilding of 
Old Cedar Creek furnace. 

" When the last laird o' Ravenswood 
To Ravenswood shall ride 
And woo a dead maiden to be his bride, 
He shall stable his steed in the Kelpie's flow 
And his name shall be lost forevermore." . . . 

So the works went fast to rack and ruin. Late in the eighteen- 
thirties, Miss Hamilton recollects, the offices and tenants' houses 
remained intact and there were quite a lot of folk living in the 
neighborhood. 

Michael Tuomey, the first State geologist, visited this region 
in the eighteen-forties and recounts in the " Second Biennial 
Report of the Geology of Alabama," published in 1853 : 

" About three miles from Russellville another bed (of chert)' 
occurs in a ridge running north thirty degrees west. For some 
distance in this ridge iron ore is found in greater or less abun- 
dance; it is in general of good quality, and free from inter- 
mixture with foreign substances. Numerous excavations in the 
ridge mark the spots from which ore was produced for the supply 
of a furnace that was once in operation on a branch of Bear 
Creek, about three miles beyond the village. The ore is of ex- 
cellent quality. A considerable amount of labor was required 



32 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



for the extraction of the ore, for it is scattered through the bed 
of loam, and whilst the beds are rich in some places they may be 
barren at others; and as the surface rarely presents any indica- 
tions of bodies of ore much unproductive labor must have been 
the result. On the way to the furnace indications of the existence 
of ore are found on the surface, and an occasional excavation 
was seen ; but the ore in the vicinity of the furnace is much less 
pure than that of the beds between the village and Newberry. 
The ruins of the furnace still remain, and the fragments of iron 
scattered about show that both castings and malleable iron were 
manufactured here. The high charges and difficulties of trans- 
portation are the causes to which the suspension of these works 
are attributed." 

When "Billy" Goold and Llewellyn Johns were out pros- 
pecting for Colonel Enoch Ensley, away along in the eighteen- 
eighties, they ran across the ruins of Old Cedar Creek. " I dinna 
look twice," said Uncle Billy," 't was na but a mess o ? weeds an' 
rock to me. Did I know now 't was the first furnace of Alabama, 
aweel, that had been different ! But I thocht had been some auld 
limekiln." 

The ruins of furnace and little settlement withstood the ero- 
sive forces of rains, weather, and overflow for an extraordinary 
length of time. Even to-day the foundations of one of the old 
storage rooms crumble beside the creek near the " furnace spring." 
And there are scattered all through the ruins and the jungle of 
the underbrush, broken pieces of skillets, pots, and kettles. All 
that remains of the furnace itself in 1909 is a conical mass of 
stones and earth shadowed by tall beech trees and resembling 
more an Indian mound than masonry, while a narrow promontory 
of slag containing broken bits of iron and charcoal extends out 
into the stream. There is also a distinct line of depression, easily 
followed for some four hundred yards, from one heel of the horse- 
shoe bend to the other, a two-mile span, which served as the old 
mill race. There is rich farming land about the town of Russell- 
ville and the Darlington station of the Northern Alabama Rail- 
road, but in the neighborhood of the furnace property, once so 
busy, there is to-day no sight or sound of life. " Until 1888," ob- 
serves Dr. William B. Phillips, in his " Iron Making in Alabama," 
"a period of sixty years, this deposit of the brown ore of the 
Russellville belt remained undeveloped and unused." 

W. A. Orman, of Russellville, who photographed the Cedar 
Creek site for this work, mentions that his aunt, Mrs. Sherrill, 



Site of Old Cedar Creek, First Blast Furnace of 

Alabama, Franklin County, 1818 
Ruins of Brighthope Furnace in Bibb County 
Rob Roy Catalan Forge on Talladega Creek, Talla- 
dega County 



FIRST FURNACE AND FIRST RAILROAD 33 



still preserves a large sugar kettle made at the old furnace. 
Charles E. Wilson has a slab of this early iron, weighing one 
hundred pounds and resembling more a casting than an ordinary 
bit of pig iron. Another piece has served occasionally as an ex- 
hibit at various State fairs. 

The following incidents are related in a current number of the 
Bessemer Weekly: 

" Since the early days, brown ore mining in Russellville has 
had a checkered career. An immense amount is now in progress. 
Stability came a few years since when the Sloss Company was 
reorganized into the Sloss-Sheffield Steel and Iron Company, and 
the three furnaces that were once the interests of Colonel Enoch # 
Ensley in this section passed into this company's hands. . . . 

" A remarkable story is told by Mr. C. E. Wilson, which demon- 
strates the fact that some of the iron lands of Russells Valley 
are worth more than gold mines. He says: ' A few years ago 
I sold a small plot of ground — about an acre — lying near 
Russellville, to a negro as a building site, for the sum of fifty dol- 
lars. He occupied and cultivated the land for some time, then 
gave one of the mining companies an option on it at a valuation 
of five hundred dollars. While they were mining the ore from 
adjoining land their option expired, and the negro sold the plot 
for five hundred dollars cash to a couple of citizens who knew 
the value of it. When the mining company realized their over- 
sight they tried to buy this bit of ore land from the recent pur- 
chasers, but could not get it, and were compelled to pay a royalty 
of fifteen cents a ton on all the ore obtained from it. Their 
steam shovels are now digging away, and it is estimated that 
more than twenty-five thousand tons will be dug, amounting to 
a royalty of nearly four thousand dollars for this single acre. 
And there are adjoining acres just as rich/ " 

"Another story is told to the effect that Colonel Ensley once 
asked a man what he would take for ten acres of land which he 
owned near Russellville. The man said that he would sell it 
for five dollars an acre as it was a little rough for farming. The 
price was paid and this piece of land is one of the richest now 
owned by the Sloss-Sheffield Steel and Iron Company. This 
company also owns great tracts of iron land a few miles east of 
Russellville, and operates five immense washers where upwards of 
a thousand tons daily are loaded in cars and sent to the furnaces 
at Sheffield and Florence. 

"The Sheffield Coal and Iron Company's plant is also con- 
ducted upon a large scale, and here in addition to the washers this 
company maintains a large limestone quarry. The Alabama- 
Virginia mines and washers are situated five miles southeast of 
Russellville, and from this point also hundreds of tons of raw 
material are shipped each day. In fact nearly all of the ore which 

3 



34 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



supplies the big blast furnaces at Sheffield comes from Russell- 
ville, and the mining of this ore gives employment to hundreds 
of laborers and contributes largely to the prosperity of the town." 

Besides those of the early settlers of Franklin County thus far 
mentioned, — the families, Russell, Heslip, Hamilton, Jones, 
Sherrill, Wilson, and Orman, — there were several other families 
located in the neighborhood of Old Cedar Creek at its start, whose 
descendants became more or less identified with the Birmingham 
District. Among these are the names Van Hoose, Martin, and 
Bankhead. 

Jesse Van Hoose was a partner of Brice "Wilson in the mer- 
cantile business at Russellville. His folk, the Van Hoosens of 
Holland, had emigrated to New York shortly before the Revolu- 
tion and he himself had come to Mississippi Territory and joined 
Major Russell's colony among the Chickasaws in 1815. In 1821 
young Van Hoose became first clerk of the Circuit Court of 
Franklin County, and shortly afterwards went into the woods 
of Pickens, later Fayette County, on a trading expedition. He 
was the second white man to settle in that region, and in 1826 
was elected to the State Senate, and eventually became Judge of 
the County Court. He afterwards located his mercantile business 
in Tuskaloosa and became one of the original board of trustees 
of the University of Alabama. His son, Colonel James M. 
Van Hoose, years later practiced law in Birmingham where 
the family became connected with various civic enterprises. 

The Martin family, with the Rosamunds, were among the band 
of French Huguenots who fled to Virginia in the seventeenth 
century. From thence they traveled into Tennessee, and at 
length settled in Alabama near Cedar Creek. Joshua Lanier 
Martin, born in 1799 in Tennessee, joined his father in Franklin 
County. Later he practiced law in Limestone and Tuskaloosa, 
and became a governor of Alabama. His sons were Captain J ohn 
M. Martin, United States Member of Congress in the eighteen- 
seventies, and Charles J. Martin, clerk of the Inferior Court of 
Birmingham. There is further mention of Charles Martin in 
the " War Period." E. P. Rosamund of Birmingham, a son of Dr. 
William Capers Rosamund, of Jasper, Alabama, is to-day general 
superintendent of mines of the Pratt Consolidated Coal Company. 

Dr. Rosamund had settled in Walker County about 1856, hav- 
ing come from South Carolina. His ancestors fled from France 
in 1598 at the Edict of Nantes, and settled first in Virginia. 



FIRST FURNACE AND FIRST RAILROAD 35 



In Alabama Dr. Rosamund served in later years as State senator 
from Walker, Jefferson, and Shelby counties. 

Among other French families leaving their home during the 
Huguenot persecution was the family De la Roche, of whose 
stock, identified to-day in the coal and iron business of Alabama, 
is Guy R. Johnson, vice-president and general manager of the 
Alabama Consolidated Coal and Iron Company. 

Genuine pioneer beginnings for the iron business can thus be 
discerned from the Cedar Creek attempt and from the records of 
the frontier smiths and early iron makers. The first blast 
furnace antedates, by twelve years, the first cotton mill in Ala- 
bama. It is coincident with the first organized effort at river 
transportation, with the incorporation of the St. Stephens Steam- 
boat Company; the establishment of the first banks of the terri- 
tory, at St. Stephens and Huntsville ; and with the founding of the 
first institution of learning beyond the log cabin schools, the old 
St. Stephens Academy. From every view point, industrial, finan- 
cial, educational, and political, the year 1818 is of tremendous 
import in Alabama history, quite apart from its significance in 
these chronicles as the birth year of the blast furnace. 

The whole territory was being driven at racing gait into 
statehood, though under steady reins. As to the man holding 
these reins, William Wyatt Bibb, first governor of both Territory 
and State, he stood stalwartly for law and order and urged 
progress in diverse lines. For instance, he organized the three 
judicial districts, repealed the laws upon usury, advocated road 
making, bridge building, placing of ferries, making of schools, 
and he endeavored to suppress Indian outrages in the ceded 
lands. He appointed an engineer to examine the rivers and report 
how navigation might be improved. Further, in 1818, Governor 
Bibb formed thirteen new counties, a number of which are in 
the mineral belt. He altered the boundaries of various then ex- 
isting counties and prevented encroachment of Mississippi. He 
placed, in short, some semblance of the yoke of government upon 
the crude, wild young country, and gave it foundation on which 
to build. 

He was a quiet sort, this William Bibb, a man with a clear 
vision and steady nerve; gifted, too, with a certain quick sense 
of diagnosis. Doubtless his several years 5 practice as a surgeon 
bred in him those precise qualities that stood young Alabama in 
such good stead. At any rate, President Monroe, translating the 



36 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



young Georgian from his seat in the United States Senate to 
governorship of what was then a world of half breeds, soldiers, 
and emigrants, had his faith in the man fully justified. 

Like several other men in the lead of affairs of earliest Ala- 
bama, William Wyatt Bibb had, too, a pronounced spirit of pride 
in the Union and affiliation with the Union. As a slight tribute 
to headquarters as it were, some of the first counties organized 
were named after Madison, Jefferson, Monroe, and Ben Franklin. 
The first county, Washington, bore name, as has been instanced, 
from Mississippi Territory days. This early sense of brotherhood 
became smothered all too soon. In the succeeding decades, the 
State came to have a wan feeling, and, indeed, actual condition 
of isolation from the Union ; it had small voice, inadequate rep- 
resentation, and even in its own immediate internal affairs, no 
unity, no organization, and no industrial brotherhood or common 
ground of industrial endeavor or hope. 

An instance in point is the first railroad venture of Alabama, 
the Decatur and Tuscumbia, set on foot in 1829-30. This, the 
initial railroad south of the Alleghanies, had origin in the same 
region where the first blast furnace was constructed, in the 
county directly adjoining Franklin at the north, named Colbert, 
after one of the friendly Chickasaw chiefs. This particular sec- 
tion of Alabama was well settled as far back as 1779. Indian 
villages and French trading posts existed near the sites of the 
present cities, Florence, Tuscumbia, and Sheffield. Although 
pioneer furnace and pioneer railroad enterprises were contempo- 
rary in a partial degree, they had no bearing upon each other, else 
had the entire character and history of the coal and iron business 
of Alabama been utterly changed, and the Sheffield District, not 
the Birmingham District, first moved into bold emprise and into 
light of the world's eye. As it was, both furnace and railroad 
suffered early collapse. Their main uses were to point directions 
to succeeding enterprises in later generations; Cedar Creek to 
Sloss-Sheffield Steel and Iron Company's workings, and the De- 
catur and Tuscumbia to the Memphis and Charleston Railroad. 

But to the story. There was a cotton planter in that Tennessee 
Valley region, David Hubbard, who was early on the lookout, as 
men have been since his time to the present day, for ways and 
means to overcome the obstruction to freight traffic caused by 
the Mussel Shoals of the Tennessee River. He learned of a new, 
odd transportation method then being attempted at Mauch 



FIRST FURNACE AND FIRST RAILROAD 37 



Chunk, Pennsylvania, and in 1829 he went up to investigate. 
This, as it happened, was the first railroad experiment in the 
United States. It was a switch-back or gravity road some twenty 
miles long and operated by a stationary engine. It was used for 
hauling anthracite coal in the Panther Creek Valley. 

Upon seeing it, David Hubbard decided to adopt it in Ala- 
bama for cotton transportation, the line to lead from a point 
opposite Florence, where the city of Sheffield is to-day, to Tus- 
cumbia, the lower terminus of the Mussel Shoals, and thence 
to Decatur. Charter was granted by the Alabama legislature in 
1830. Major Hubbard formed a company made up of various 
cotton planters. Benjamin Sherrod was elected president. They 
then set to work to get up subscriptions, as all their successors in 
the early railroad history of Alabama were destined to do. Then 
and there was the root of Alabama's disorders struck upon. No 
alliance of common interests, no concentrated effort or enthusiasm 
for progress could be rammed into the legislature or the people. 
Sherrod and Hubbard were forced to give their individual en- 
dorsements to support the obligations of the road in order to 
bring it to completion. The grades were light and the track laid 
out as a strap rail : pieces of bar iron bolted on parallel wooden 
stringers. It came inside the estimated cost of $5,000 per mile, 
but equipment and rolling stock counted heavily. A George 
Stephenson locomotive with copper fire box was bought. Con- 
struction work straggled along at the rate of from twelve to fifteen 
miles a year. By 1834 the forty-six-mile line was complete. The 
passage of the first "through train" was given a great greeting 
all down the line. " The little Stephenson fellow " made full ten 
miles an hour pulling cars laden haystack high with cotton bales. 
It soon got out of repair though — doubtless because of a farmer 
at the throttle — and mules became the motive power. This cir- 
cumstance gave color to the declaration that the Decatur and 
Tuscumbia Railroad was no railroad but a tramway, and there- 
fore not the first in Alabama. The existence of the little George 
Stephenson proves the case. 

Industrial events coincident with this first railroad were the 
opening in January, 1832, of the first canal of Alabama, connect- 
ing Huntsville with Looney's Landing; the erection of the Bell 
Cotton Factory, and the incorporation, also during Governor 
Gayle's administration, of three branches of the State bank at 
Montgomery, Decatur, and Mobile. 



38 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 

As to Major Hubbard, he served as representative and senator, 
and as one of the early board of trustees of the University of Ala- 
bama, and in 1839 was elected to the United States Congress. 
By his railroad venture, both he and Benjamin Sherrod lost 
eventually the bulk of their personal fortune, for the other people, 
prolific of promises and cheers for the enterprise, never backed 
it with a dollar. It was small wonder that Major Hubbard's 
temper was in shreds at the last and that he was termed " un- 
popular." His failure of a railroad, under hand of Sam Tate, 
was resurrected in the eighteen-fifties, when it became part of the 
old Memphis and Charleston, which was projected in the main 
by Huntsville men. 

Back of the history of every railroad set going in Alabama, 
one tastes sour facts. The records of the fight for transportation 
are too voluminous to approach, the evolution of that phase of 
development too intricate for other than a glance now and then. 
The first ways through the wilderness were, as a matter of course, 
the ancient Indian trails, followed by the trade routes, which were 
cut by the French and English fur traders, the early colonial 
ways, pioneer wagon roads, Federal roads, and military traces, all 
of which followed in the main lines of the Indian goings. Peter 
Hamilton observes that a common fallacy throughout the State 
has been to attribute every road ever made in Alabama to Andrew 
J ackson. The mail routes grew over the wagon roads. And all the 
early smiths, iron makers, and forge builders peddled their hollow 
ware and bar iron by wagon, ox, or mule team over these rough 
wagon roads. The mail stage system, carried to top notch by 
Powell and Jemison, gave place in the late eighteen-fifties to the 
railroads for traffic, and early coal transportation that was carried 
on by flatboats, barges, yawls, and dugouts, was superseded by 
the steamboat squadrons — another book of Alabama doings. 

Following the 1830 railroad venture, charter for a second rail- 
road, the old Montgomery Western, was granted by legislature in 
1834. The third and fourth railroads, each of which was 
chartered in 1848, were the Mobile and Ohio and the Selma, 
Rome, and Dalton, formerly Alabama and Tennessee Rivers 
Railroad, now a part of the Southern system. Fifth in the list 
is the Wills Valley Railroad, chartered in 1852, and sixth, the 
Northeast and Southwest, or Alabama and Chattanooga, now the 
Alabama Great Southern, chartered in 1853. The Alabama 
South and North Railroad, now a part of the Louisville and 



FIRST FURNACE AND FIRST RAILROAD 39 



Nashville Railroad system, and the main road of interest in 
these records, was chartered in 1854. The date of charter by 
no means indicates the date of construction, for in the majority 
of instances, no sooner did the legislature grant charter than it 
endeavored to strangle further attempt at construction. In the 
chapters relative to the South and North Railroad the matter will 
be presented in detail. All the evidence goes to show that what- 
ever was done in the way of securing transportation facilities in 
early Alabama was accomplished by the efforts of a few individ- 
uals at great personal sacrifice in the face of not only public in- 
difference, but often violent opposition. 



CHAPTER IV 



EARLY RECORDS OF JEFFERSON AND WALKER COUNTIES 

First settlement in Jones Valley. Origins of mining towns in Birmingham 
District. Old Hawkins Plantation site of Thomas. Folklore of Shades 
Valley. Early uses of iron ore by first settlers. Founding of Elyton. 
The pioneer prospector of Red Mountain. Old log cabin schoolhouse 
first building on property of Woodward Iron Company. Making of first 
iron out of Red Mountain ore. Last glimpse of Indians of Alabama. 
First coal operations. Story of the Hanby family. Tuomey's descrip- 
tion of diving for coal. How coal was floated down to Mobile. First 
Warrior coal mined in 1827. Speculators visit region in eighteen-forties. 
Remote and unsettled character of Walker County. Reminiscences of 
early settlers. Famous pilots of coal barges. Summary of antebellum 
operations in Walker County by Joel C. Du Bose. Sketches of lead- 
ing pioneers of coal business. Anecdote and incident of old days. 

OTHER counties besides Franklin, established early in 
Alabama's history, and of special interest in these 
chronicles, were Blount, Jefferson, Walker, Tuskaloosa, 
Bibb, Shelby, Talladega, Calhoun, Cherokee, Lauderdale, and 
Lamar. Their records are treated in the following three chapters 
and cover territorial times, the period of young statehood, and 
the outbreak of the Civil War. 

The first group to be considered comprises the counties of 
Blount, Jefferson, and Walker. A meagre log cabin colony was 
located in the extreme southern section of Old Blount County 
about the time of Andrew Jackson's coming into Alabama. Back 
of it there were of course Tennesseans, who appear to have been 
in the ascendency in those days all through the mineral belt. 
They were, in the main, men of fair working qualities, and, gen- 
erally speaking, were game. According to Powell's " History of 
Blount County/' a couple of frontiersmen, one J ohn J ones and his 
brother-in-law, Caleb Friley, rode down out of Madison County 
about 1813, and took up home sites in the valley at the base of 
the long hill of red dye rock so treasured by the Indians. 1 They 

1 Miss Duffee writes in "Pioneer Days," Birmingham Age-Herald, August 
15, 1909: 

" From all I can learn it is my belief that John Jones came from Green- 
ville district, South Carolina. In a letter received from Dr. Andrew Jones 



EARLY RECORDS 



41 



built log shacks and a blacksmith shop, and blazed a wagon road 
up through the woods to Bearmeat Cabin, thus opening the coun- 
try to friends and kinfolk, more fighting Tennesseans, and a 
handful of South Carolinians. In this Jones Valley, the city of 
Birmingham was founded in 1871. The little log cabin settle- 
ment, which was called Jonesboro, with its wooden fort, event- 
ually became the site of the town of Bessemer. The crude, slight 
beginnings opened the way for the making of the town of Elyton 
and various other places known at the present time as Thomas, 
Woodward, Owenton, and Woodlawn, which were among those 
incorporated in 1909 in Greater Birmingham. 

Old Fort J onesboro was no more than the customary American 
pioneer fort of the wilderness, a hollow square, stockaded with 
logs, to which several families could muster in case of Indian 
attack. "It was seldom occupied," notes B. E. Grace, in the 
"Jefferson County Record," " for there were few Indians then in 
this portion of the country and no hostile demonstrations." To- 
day the red ore mines of the Muscoda group, which belong to the 
Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company, overlook the pre- 
cise site of this little wooden fort. 

Just across country, twenty miles northeast from Jonesboro and 
far up the valley, a second colony was started two or three years 

of Amity, Clark County, Arkansas, and dated December 18, 1886, in refer- 
ence to my sketches of the valley, then being published in the Birmingham 
Age, he says : ' As my ancestors were the settlers of that valley, and gave it 
its name, of course it would be interesting to me. The stories of my father 
and grandfather are yet fresh in my memory about the stirring times in 
the settlement there. John Jones and Mr. Roupe settled there in 1816. 
This John Jones was a cousin to my grandfather and wore the unenviable 
name of " Devil John " to distinguish him from the many others of the same 
name, and because of his wild habits. My grandfather went there in 1817, 
and lived there six years, some Indians being there at the time. Some years 
after his settlement he was followed by his brother, Jolly Jones, who settled 
near Tuskaloosa, and lived and died there. Soon after others came in and 
settled, Mr. Friley, General Woodward, the Hanbys, Mark Goodin, the 
Mitchells, McDuffs, McElroys, and Mr. Durrah, — all the above having come 
and settled there prior to the year 1825, at which time he left Alabama and 
went to West Tennessee, and to his old occupation of cane-braking for 
others. I remember to have heard him say that he left Greenville district, 
South Carolina, in the year 1799, and headed a caravan of movers to the 
southern district of Kentucky, and stayed there until 1815, then went to 
Hickman County, Tennessee, thence in 1817, to Jefferson County. About 
the time he went to the valley John Jones had a fight with Mr. Roupe 
which resulted in the favor of Jones, and Mr. Roupe sold out and went in 
the next valley below and settled, and that took the name of Roupe's 
Valley. I am glad to hear of "that garden spot of creation," as my grand- 
father was wont to call it. I may add that I was born in Hardman County, 
Tennessee, in 1827, and in 1835 went with the old pioneer to Pontotoc 
County, Mississippi, where he died at the age of 64.' " 



42 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



after the planting of Jonesboro by a group of Tennesseans and 
South Carolinians, led by one John Wood. Mention is made of 
the families Cunningham, York, Tarrant, Co wden, Reid, Mont- 
gomery, Barton, Culbertson, Brown, and Hawkins. This colony, 
later called Woods Station, became in time Woodlawn. 

Various feuds, " bear fights," Powell calls them, are mentioned 
as arising between the Tennesseans and South Carolinians. The 
Tennesseans took and held the pick of things, and usually came 
out "masters of the ring." 

One of these pioneer settlers, Williamson Hawkins, took up two 
thousand acres near Village Creek, some four miles northwest of 
Woods Station. By the eighteen-fifties he owned one hundred 
and fifty negroes and made one hundred bales of cotton a year. 
His grandson, James Hawkins, became solicitor of Jefferson 
County and was also at one time a law partner of Senator John 
T. Morgan. The old Hawkins cotton plantation was sold in the 
eight een-eigh ties to Samuel Thomas of Pennsylvania. The town 
of Thomas and the Pioneer Company furnaces, property of the 
Republic Iron and Steel Company, are located on these lands. 

Not far from Fort Jonesboro over in the valley across Red 
Mountain, which is called Shades Valley, there wound in those 
days an Indian trail, leading from the Choctaw village, " Old 
Beloved Town," later known as the city of Tuskaloosa, to another 
Indian village on the Cahaba. Crossing Shades Mountain, the 
escarpment of the great Cahaba coal fields, it ran near to the spot 
where in 1862 the Oxmoor furnaces, now owned by the Tennessee 
Company, were built. " Long after the settlement of J ones 
Valley," observes Grace, "this trace was distinctly visible on 
property owned by Rev. John Caldwell." 

As for the story of Shades Mountain and Shades Valley, the 
names seem rooted in gloom. One account, related by the widow 
of Baylis Grace, tells how a traveler, a trader, perhaps, passing 
through that region was set upon by robbers and murdered. His 
skeleton was found years and years later, on the bank of the little 
creek in the valley. The stream was therefore called " Creek of 
the Shades of Death," and so gave name to both valley and moun- 
tain. Another tradition relates that the place was given its sad 
name on account of the taking off of many of the first settlers 
who were stricken with fever. Still a third explanation is simply 
that because of the quick-coming shadows and the dense foliage, a 
taller and richer growth by far than in J ones Valley, " the place 



EARLY RECORDS 



43 



just naturally came to be called Shades Valley or Valley of the 
Shadows." 

Once two English pilgrims, Thomas W, Farrar and Seraphine 
Farrar, passed over Shades Mountain on their way to settle in 
Elyton. On the crest of the high ridge are rocks, sharp-cut and 
curiously eroded, out of which a Doone might spring. Here on 
the highest point of the ridge, at the spot called Lovers Leap, the 
travelers carved, in old English letters, so clearly and exquisitely 
wrought that they are plainly legible to this day, their names, 
the date August 20, 1827, and these words from Childe Harold: 

11 To sit on rocks, to muse o'er flood and fell, 
Slowly to trace the forest's shady scene 
Where things that own not man's dominion dwell 
And mortal foot hath ne'er or rarely been." 

Jefferson County was carved out of Blount by act of the legis- 
lature in 1819. In that year the " cities" were Bearmeat Cabin, 
— later Blountsville, the headquarters of an Indian chief, — • 
Elyton, and Jonesboro. All were located on the public wagon 
road, the Huntsville Pike, " a lonely rocky road." The black- 
smith's shop at Jonesboro was, so Miss Duffee states, " the lead- 
ing iron working establishment of Jones Valley, and was looked 
on with awe and admiration by the Indians. ... In the early 
settlement of the valley, a few remaining bands of the Creek tribe 
annually traversed the region from their camp at Mudtown, on 
the Cahaba, to Oldtown, on the Warrior, on their trading expedi- 
tions in belts, bows and arrows, and cane baskets. They were a 
harmless set of vagabonds, and gradually disappeared from the 
haunts of the white race as the country became more populous. 
They used the iron ore, or red-dye rock, as it was familiarly 
called, to stain their implements and form a mixture for their 
favorite war paint. For many years it was a popular element in 
the domestic economy of the pioneer families and with it they 
colored their woolen and cotton fabrics, and being easily set 
with chemical substance, it made a lasting and beautiful dye 
stuff, especially for jeans, blankets, cover-lids, and linsey dresses 
for the belles. Numerous efforts to utilize the ore were made by 
the county blacksmiths by constructing crude ovens and mixing 
lime rock with it, but no practical results followed, as the product 
was too brittle to admit of heating and hammering into shape 
on the anvil. All metal products were costly in those days and 
had to be transported on horses or by wagons from one to two 



44 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



hundred miles. A few bars of iron were of almost priceless value 
in the eyes of the farmers. Mineral lands were consequently- 
looked upon as useless and possessed no market value whatever; 
in fact they were carefully avoided by the seekers after homes and 
lands in the valley/' 

By 1830 Jones Valley had become fairly well settled. "And 
the woods," says Baylis Grace, "suited a hunter to the queen's 
taste. The south side of the Cahaba River was then almost en- 
tirely uninhabited. The Warrior and the Cahaba were beautiful 
streams, clear as crystal, in which you could see a fish in ten feet 
of water. . . . We all wore buckskin leggings reaching from the 
ankle up to the hips, fastened with brass buttons on each side of 
the leg all the way up. Cattle were raised in the woods and 
afforded all the butter, milk, and beef we needed. What little 
cotton was made was hauled to the falls of the Black Warrior, 
as Tuskaloosa was then called, and exchanged for salt, sugar, 
coffee, and calico, which latter was then twenty-five cents per 
yard. The first grist and saw mill supplying Jefferson County 
with meal, flour, and lumber was built by William Rose Sadler." 

Mr. Sadler was a Virginian, and by profession was a surveyor 
and civil engineer. In addition to starting the first mills in 
Jefferson County, he put up brick kilns and built the old brick 
courthouse at Elyton as well as courthouses in other localities. 
Among his great-grandsons are James McAdory Gillespy and 
John Sharp Gillespy, who are citizens of Birmingham to-day. 

The first " Seat of Justice " of Jefferson County was a log hut 
near the old Worthington place. A cabin at Carrollsville was 
later used, and at length, in 1820, the Elyton courthouse was 
built. Elyton, the first market town and trading center of the 
county, was incorporated in 1820 with seven hundred inhabitants. 
The town site, comprising one hundred and twenty acres, was a 
gift to the early settlers by a Federal land agent, one William 
Ely. "Captain" Ely was a native of Hartford, Connecticut. 
A curious instance on file among the old deeds of the county is 
the record that Captain Ely had ceded to the Deaf and Dumb 
Society of Hartford, by special act of Congress, in 1816, hundreds 
of acres of Alabama lands, of which the suburbs of Owenton and 
Earle Place are now portions. Among other early settlers of old 
Elyton and its immediate vicinity were James McAdory, David 
Prude, John Martin, James Hall, Stephen Reeder, J ames Mudd, 
Jonathan Steele, Thomas W. Farrar, Stephen Hall, John M. 



EARLY RECORDS 



45 



Dupuy, Thomas W. Rockett, J. W. McWilliams, Daniel Watkins, 
E. W. Peck, W. B. Duncan, Samuel S. Earle, Baylis W. Earle, 
Charles McLaren, William A. Walker, John W. Henley, Peyton 
King, William F. Nabers, William S. Mudd, M. T. Porter, Joseph 
R. Smith, M. H. Jordan, G. W. Hewitt, and P. H. Earle. 

A wagon road was gradually made over an old Indian trace 
leading past Elyton, to Ditton's Landing on the Tennessee River, 
and thence to Huntsville. This was called the old Huntsville 
Road, and was used by the pony express and the early mail stages. 
It became the main traveled highway, together with the Monte- 
vallo Road of the mineral region, and the first route of transpor- 
tation of the pioneer iron masters and furnacemen. The old 
Montevallo Road crossed Red Mountain. Constant heavy traffic 
ground the rocks in certain places into a fine red powder that 
early became a source of mystery. The first man so far as is 
known to assert that this was " iron dust " and the " dye-rock " 
iron ore was Baylis Earle Grace. It was generally said that Red 
Mountain rock was good for dyeing breeches, but was of little 
further use ! Baylis Grace was brought by his parents into J ef- 
ferson County in 1820, when he was twelve years old. The Grace 
family was of old patriot stock. Joseph Grace, the boy's grand- 
father, had been killed in the Revolution at the Battle of Eutaw 
Springs. His grandmother had set her house on fire rather than 
let a British soldier enter. The family left North Carolina for 
Mississippi Territory in 1809. Baylis Grace attended the little 
log cabin school taught by Thomas Carroll, "along with John 
W. Henley, William King, Drayton Nabers, and the two Harrison 
girls." This was the first schoolhouse in Jefferson Count}', and 
had the old puncheon seats and dirt floor. The second school 
was started at Jonesboro a few years later and was taught by 
Hugh Morrow, a relative of John C. Calhoun, who came to Ely- 
ton in 1825. The property on which " Teacher " Carroll's school 
was located passed later into the hands of the Jordan family. 
Mrs. Fleming Jordan planted a rose garden on the site of the 
old log schoolhouse, and in 1882-83 the blast furnaces of the 
Woodward Iron Company were put up there, and the town of 
Woodward was laid out on the Fleming J ordan farm. 

Baylis Grace left school after his father's death to enter 
the office of the circuit clerk, Harrison W. Goyne, at Elyton. 
He eventually became circuit clerk himself, then sheriff of Jef- 
ferson County, and later general administrator and guardian 



46 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



for county holdings. His first land investment, a farm on Red 
Mountain, is still known as Grace's Gap. This, with the old 
ISTabers and Worthington homes later became headquarters for 
various of the pioneer coal and iron men, prospectors, and geolo- 
gists of the Birmingham District, prominent among whom was 
Major "Tom" Peters. Baylis Grace edited The Central Ala- 
oamian, successor to the first county paper, Jones Valley Times. 

The story of the making of the first iron from Red Mountain 
ore is this : Having become convinced that the dye rock, exposed 
by travel over the old Montevallo Road, was iron ore, Baylis 
Grace cut into " a big twenty-foot outcrop " on his farm and dug 
out a wagon load. This was sent down to one of Jonathan New- 
ton Smith's forges, in Bibb County, in the eighteen-forties. 
Here it was made into wrought iron and a few blooms were dis- 
tributed to Jones Valley blacksmiths. Grace kept a bar of the 
iron as a prize exhibit all his life. On the spot from which he 
dug the ore Spaulding mine, owned by the Republic Iron and 
Steel Company, is now located. Grace also made the first sale 
of Red Mountain ore land for manufacturing purposes in 1862 
from the tract later known as the Ishcooda group, and now 
owned by the Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company. The 
purchasers were Frank Gilmer and John T. Milner, who with 
aid from the Confederate government, established Oxmoor fur- 
naces. The old company purchased the entire west side of 
Grace's Gap, now owned by the Tennessee Company. 

In later years Baylis Grace acted as agent for the Pioneer Iron 
Company and purchased hundreds of acres of iron and coal lands 
for the Thomas family, thus forming a nucleus for the Republic 
Iron and Steel Company's Alabama holdings captained to-day by 
Tracy W. Guthrie. 

It is in the decade 1830-40 that one has final glimpse of the 
Indians of Alabama. "Like the leaves of the sycamore when 
the wind of winter is blowing," mourned a Choctaw orator, " the 
Indians are passing away, and the white people will soon know 
no more of them than they do of those deep caves out of which 
they had their origin ! " 

One group of Muscogee chiefs marched westward down the 
Huntsville and Tuskaloosa Road by way of Ely ton. T. 0. Smith's 
mother, then Margaret Jordan, remembers how she ran to get a 
look at them when she was a little girl. Baylis Grace remarks : 
" I recollect noticing them as they sat on the piazza of the Taylor 



Historic Spaulding Mine on Red Mountain, where First Iron 
Ore in Jefferson County was dug. Republic Iron and 
Steel Company 




Ishcooda Camp on Red Mountain and Plants of Slopes 13 and 
14, 1 showing Tipples as built To-day. T. C. I. 



EARLY RECORDS 



47 



Hotel, and I think a finer looking set of men were seldom seen 
together." 

It is at this time that the incident of Eufaula's last speech to 
the white men is recorded. It was in the Capitol at Tuskaloosa. 
As a final act of courtesy to the Muscogee chief, his request to be 
allowed to address them had been granted by the assembled legis- 
lature. Rising with a profound dignity, Eufaula stood upon the 
rostrum in the old senate chamber and spoke these words in the 
Muscogee tongue : 

" I come, brothers, to see the great house of Alabama and the 
men who make the laws, and to say farewell in brotherly kindness 
before I go to the far West, where my people are now going. In 
time gone I have thought that the white men wanted to bring 
burden and ache of heart upon my people by driving them from 
their homes and yoking them with laws they did not understand. 
But I have now become satisfied that they are not unfriendly 
towards us, but that they wish us well. In these lands of Ala- 
bama, which have belonged to my forefathers and where their 
bones lies buried, I see that the Indian fires are going out. Soon 
they will be cold. New fires are lighting in the West for us, they 
say, and we will go there. I do not believe that our Great Father 
means to harm his red children, but that he wishes us well. We 
leave behind our good will to the people of Alabama who build 
the great houses, and to the men who make the laws. This is all 
I have to say. I come to speak farewell to the wise men who 
make the laws and to wish them peace and gladness in the country 
which my forefathers owned, and which now I part from, to go 
to other home in the West. I leave the graves of my fathers, for 
the Indian fires are going out . . . are almost gone . . . and new 
fires are lighting yonder for us. . . 

Three generations ago Eufaula spoke these words. Yet one 
hears them now with beating heart and as though they were 
spoken but yesterday. And once every year they may he seen 
written plain upon the sides of Red Mountain. For always at 
the time the hunter's moon rises out of Shades Valley, the dead 
leaves of the iron hill are set on fire miles and miles. They burn 
from base to summit, and quiver in long, slender, curving lines 
and sweeping fiery circles and subtle form of ancient scroll and 
mystic hieroglyphic. Seen in the deep of night from the silent 
streets and houses of the city of Birmingham, high as clouds 
against the dark hill, they glow like master poems, lyric strains of 
the forgotten Indian life written upon the very skies of Ala- 
bama and sounding sweet and sorrowful forever. 



48 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



The early period of Jefferson County, though rich in folklore 
and " neighborhood incidents," has no record of iron making be- 
yond the smith's crude efforts and Baylis Grace's experiment, 
until the outbreak of the Civil War. It has, however, with Walker 
County some exceedingly interesting points in the early history 
of coal mining. 

According to Baylis Grace, the men engaged in the first coal 
operations of Alabama were David Hanby, Captain James W. 
Hewitt, J onathan Steele, and James A. Mudd. " Hewitt opened 
his mines near the mouth of Turkey Creek," he says ; " Hanby's 
were higher up the river. Steele and Mudd were located near the 
mouth of Village Creek. They constructed flat-bottomed boats 
out of the tall poplars that grew in the rich bottoms, and with 
several thousand bushels of coal on board would float them down 
to Mobile. The Squaw Shoals was the great obstacle, for here 
they always had to wait for a rise in the river, but with plenty of 
water they generally went over safely, though some boats were 
lost and one or two lives." 

It seems that as early as 1827, Jackson's old machinist David 
Hanby and his sons purchased land on Turkey Creek, in Jeffer- 
son County, one and one-half miles west of Hagood's cross- 
roads, near the farms of the Green, Chambless, and Hewitt fami- 
lies. Joseph Posey, another one of Jackson's men, had a smithy 
here. John Hanby and his son put up corn, flour, and saw mills 
and did a large part of the grinding for Walker County. 
" Hanby's Mills " recurs frequently in the military reports during 
the Civil War. " Iron works " were put up at that point in 1863, 
and the locality was named Mount Pinson. To-day the Mount 
Pinson road, the smoothest road in the county, is the favorite 
run for motor cars outside of Birmingham. David Hanby's son 
says that, in 1840, David Hanby purchased some lands from 
Charles Loggins near the Blount County line. 

On this land there was coal in the bed of the Warrior River. 
He built two flatboats in the fall and loaded them with coal and 
floated them to Mobile. In Mobile nobody would buy the 
coal. He had to give it away and send a negro along with every 
bucketful to show the people how to light it and burn it. By 
1844 Hanby sent from eight to ten boats down over the shoals 
to Mobile and later as many as seventy-five boat loads. Old 
Hanby did a business amounting to six thousand dollars a year, 
it is stated, getting from four to seven dollars a ton in Mobile, for 



EARLY RECORDS 



49 



the coal. He sold most of his shipments to the gas company in 
Mobile. Still the business was risky. Nearly every year he 
would lose a flatboat or so. One year, out of twelve flatboats, 
five were wrecked and lost. It was at the coal mines at the mouth 
of Village Creek, that Michael Tuomey, the first State geologist, 
records the following curious practice : 

" I witnessed here a novel process in the art of mining, namely, 
diving for coal. A flatboat is moored parallel with the joints, 
and near the edge of the coal; long wedge-shaped crowbars are 
driven into the seams by means of mauls maneuvered by the men 
in the boat. When a ledge of about two feet is loosened in this 
way across the seam, the men take the water and dive, two or three 
together, according to the size of the masses to be brought up, 
and lift the coal bodily to the surface, and place it in the boat. 
As an improvement on this simple process, a crane is rigged on 
the boat, and a chain, slipped round the blocks of coal, raises 
them into the boat. I have seen, in this manner, masses raised 
that weighed eight hundred or one thousand pounds. The coal 
thus raised is free from all shale and other impurities, for, as 
the coal parts along the bands of shale, the latter are left be- 
hind. Notwithstanding the primitive appearance of this method 
of raising coal, it is, nevertheless, under favorable circumstances, 
and where the water is not too deep, one of the cheapest modes in 
practice, and with the addition of a diving dress, I am inclined to 
think that in no other way could coal be raised at an expense so 
moderate. 5 ' 

The practice generally in vogue, according to Tuomey, was to 
work the coal mines in drifts and "headings," as many of the 
red ore mines are worked at the present time. The coal was 
drawn up from the pit on an inclined plane by horse power, car- 
ried to the river, and conveyed down another plane to the boats. 
Concerning mining and reduction of iron ores, the first State 
geologist says : 

" Mining operations are, throughout the State, conducted with 
one special object — present cheapness; it cannot be called 
economy, for it has no reference whatever to the future. To effect 
this, the surface of the bed is skimmed, and the covering, when 
taken off, is often thrown where it must be again removed, and 
in numerous cases, things are so conducted as to make future 
operations difficult, if not impossible. And, after all, I am per- 
suaded that the end contemplated is not accomplished, and that 
the proprietors would find systematic modes far more profitable, 
even in relation to the present, than these unworkmanlike prac- 
tices. Fortunately, expensive mining operations are not necessary 

4 



50 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



with us • the beds of ore are thick, and in every instance, situated 
on high ground, so that but little skill is required in the extraction 
of the ore ; and if the labor employed were but rightly directed, 
it would leave little to be desired. 

"Nothing can show more clearly the moderate state of informa- 
tion on the subject of the production of iron from the ores, than 
the assertion constantly heard even at the works that certain Ores 
yield seventy, eighty, and ninety per cent of iron." 

George Powell, the first county surveyor of Blount, and a 
teacher and geologist, wrote in 1855 : " It is quite probable that 
the demand for coal will in a few years justify the construction 
of a railroad to the junction of Warrior and Mulberry, as almost 
all the coal is located on them and their tributary streams. It 
is true the tributaries are not navigable but they offer level ways 
by which to haul coal to the river, where it could be shipped to 
the junction on small flat or shoal boats which could return empty 
up the river. The Locust Fork of the Warrior contains some very 
fine beds of coal, which extend from the Jefferson line about ten 
miles up the river, and thin out. It was from these beds in 
1827 or 1828 that the first Warrior coal was carried to Mobile in 
flatboats by Levi Reid and James Grindle. These coal beds now 
belong to Hanby." 

Powell states further that the boating of coal was not continued, 
first, on account of the fact that the streams and rivers were not 
navigable except in times of a freshet of seven or eight feet rise ; 
second, on account of the uncertainty of sales at Mobile. He 
says that besides coal, hogs, beeves, poultry, pile staves, corn, 
and cotton were carried down the river, and that it was in 
1820 that the first flatboat was launched on the Mulberry Fork 
of the Warrior River. Concerning iron ore he says : " In Mur- 
phree's Valley there are fine beds of iron ore on vacant land within 
four miles of good water power, also a number of good mill 
seats, while white limestone, good fire stone, and a good coal bed 
one foot thick are within one-half mile of the ore beds. Yet with 
all these advantages for making iron, Blount pays annually for 
thirty thousand pounds of Tennessee bar iron/' 

Rev. F. M. Grace writes as follows : 

"In the year 1848 an amateur geologist named Hollowell, 
from the State of New York, examined the iron deposits at 
Grace's Gap and assured their owner, Mr. B. E. Grace, Sr., that 
similar ores in the Adirondack Mountains were at that time 
worth $2,000 an acre. And to assure Mr. Grace of the identity of 



EARLY RECORDS 



51 



these ores he enclosed in a letter a small fragment of the Adiron- 
dack ore which I myself examined and found it possessed of the 
same qualities as ours. It had the same oily feel, and stained 
the fingers in the same way as our well-known ' dye-stone/ 

" Similar knowledge was also held of the value of our ' stone- 
coal/ as it was then commonly called, to discriminate it from the 
charcoal used by most blacksmiths where mineral coal was not 
accessible. But the blacksmith shops at Elyton were constantly 
in use of the bituminous coal that had been dug and hauled in 
wagons from the nearest coal beds on Five-Mile Creek, some seven 
miles west of Elyton on the old Jackson road. The first coal used 
in this county was not taken from under the ground but from 
the beds of the streams. The greatest amount was found in the 
bed of the Warrior River and, long before the war, was raised 
from the water and shipped in flatboats to Mobile. The mode of 
raising the coal was very simple. First the boat was built in sum- 
mer, when the water was low, and then anchored in midstream 
till it was loaded with coal. The coal was broken loose from the 
bed of the stream with crowbars and then raised by cranes above 
the sides of the boat. The loaded vessel was then tied to the 
shore to wait for a tide which was expected in the winter and 
spring rains. A fleet of coal boats being collected, the voyage to 
Mobile began when the river had risen sufficiently to carry these 
boats over the shoals, some of which were long and dangerous. 
But the river men were expert with oars and generally made the 
trip in safety, though the loss of a boat was by no means in- 
frequent. 

" About the year 1850 Mr. James A. Mudd, a brother of Judge 
William S. Mudd, and a very enterprising merchant of Elyton, 
embarked in the coal business, in the manner above described, and 
established a coal yard in Mobile. I met him there in January, 
1852, at a hotel when he was carrying on a prosperous business. 

" In the early eighteen-fifties the Rev. Mr. Parham, of Selma, 
canvassed Jefferson County in the interest of the Alabama and 
Tennessee River Railroad, intended to connect Selma and Gun- 
ter's Landing, for which purpose the State of Alabama had appro- 
priated a certain per cent of the sale of the public lands. In a 
speech at Elyton, which I heard, he stated that Sir Charles Lyell, 
the great English geologist, on landing from a steamboat on the 
Alabama River, had taken up some of the soil into his hands, 
and after inspecting it, exclaimed : ' This is the richest soil I ever 
looked at, but the wealth of Alabama lies in the counties of 
Shelby, Jefferson, and Walker/ 

" In 1855 or 1856, Dr. L. C. Garland, of the State University, 
canvassed the counties along the line of the N". E. and S. W. rail- 
road (now the Alabama Great Southern) and advocated the 
building of rolling mills in Jefferson County to manufacture the 
rails for clothing the road. He had no doubt of the practicability 
of manufacturing railroad iron from the ores of Jefferson County, 



52 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



and had the State of Alabama then made an appropriation for 
this purpose it would have saved the $7,000,000 which it after- 
ward gave Stanton for building the road. 

"In the closing years of the war Rev. R. K. Hargrove, now 
bishop of the Southern Methodist Episcopal church, came to Ely- 
ton with a view to purchasing as much of Red Mountain as he 
could then buy with $30,000. He put up at Roebuck's stand on 
the Huntsville road (now about Twenty-first Avenue and Twenti- 
eth Street) and spent three days in making inquiries about prices 
of mountain lands. He found that he could buy these lands for 
about $1,000 per square mile, and could therefore have owned the 
whole of Red Mountain from Trussville to Bessemer for $30,000. 
After considering the question thoroughly, the bishop told me that 
he concluded not to make the purchase, although fully persuaded 
it would one day be of great value, because, as he said, ' The ex- 
istence of this ore has been known to civilized men for a hundred 
years and they have never made any use of it, and it may be 
another hundred years before they will need it. That will be too 
long hence to do me or my children any good.' He, like others, 
had supposed the prosperity of the South depended on agriculture 
and thought the time might be distant when they would go to 
making iron ! 99 

Although Walker County was established as early as 1823 from 
portions of Tuskaloosa and Marion counties, nevertheless, as 
Joel C. Du Bose writes : 

" Settlers were slow to occupy this section of the country be- 
cause of its remoteness from navigable waters and the consequent 
difficulties of reaching the market. In 1816 Richard Brecken- 
ridge made a horseback trip from some point near Columbus, 
Mississippi, through this region. His diary gives an account of 
what he saw and experienced during the two weeks of his lone 
passage through the wilds without meeting with a human being or 
discovering any signs of the habitation of white men or Indians. 
On August 20 he came upon some deserted Indian cabins at the 
site of Old Warrior Town at the confluence of Sipsey and Mul- 
berry Forks. These were probably cabins that had escaped de- 
struction at the hands of Col. John Coffee in October, 1813, when 
he attacked and burnt the town. 

" After the close of the Creek War emigrants rushed to secure 
homes in the lands ceded by the Creeks. A little later, after 
Breckenridge's journey, the hardy pioneers began to settle in what 
is now Walker County, once the corner of the land possessions of 
the Creeks, the Chickasaws, and the Cherokees. Among them 
were some of the soldiers of General Jackson. One of these was 
Mathias Turner, a noted hunter of bears and wolves and other 
wild animals. He lived near Lost Creek, a few miles above its 
junction with Wolf Creek. James, his last surviving son, for 
many years, was business manager for Captain Musgrove. 



EARLY RECORDS 



53 



" Although Walker County was at first strictly an agricultural 
section and linked with the commercial world by a dangerous 
river, the people gave themselves at once to the daring business 
of flatboating products over the treacherous shoals of the Warrior 
River to Tuskaloosa, Demopolis, and Mobile. 

" Between 1820 and 1830 William Jones went through Squaw 
Shoals on the first flatboat that ever crossed them. He was the 
father of Jasper and Pink Jones, two very old men now (1909) 
living in this county, near the old home place. The boat was loaded 
with staves and belonged to William Dunn. It was sold with its 
cargo at Tuskaloosa. For the return trip a keel was bought and 
loaded with two hundred sacks of salt and other merchandise to 
be carried up the river to Baltimore. No cable could be found 
strong enough, however, to pull the loaded keel over the Squaw 
Shoals. When the most violent rapids were reached the salt 
would be taken from the keel and carried by hand to a point up 
stream from which the keel could be pulled with its load. The 
keel would be reloaded and carried until again checked by the 
rushing waters. It required ten days to get the keel over Squaw 
Shoals. When the most violent rapids were reached the salt 
men of the crew were assisted by two bachelor farmers living 
near, and they returned the favor by helping to roll logs on the 
farm. From this early day boats carried annually, coal, corn, 
staves, and live-stock to the markets in the lower rivers. 

" The numerous outcroppings of coal, and the high prices 
offered for it in the markets made the gathering and shipping 
of it an important industry. With picks and crowbars it would 
be dug and prized from its beds on the land and in the bottoms of 
the creeks and river, and loaded into boats. Labor was needed 
to get the coal ready for shipment and boats were needed in which 
the shipments could be made. Daring pilots were also called into 
service, and many a hair-breadth escape from destruction is re- 
lated of boats and crews as they passed in the swift rushing waters 
over the rocky shoals. A pilot and from four to ten helpers 
formed the crew of a boat. Noted among the pilots were John 
Bess, James Tuggle, William Payne, James Short, James Patton, 
William Benson and John Ballenger. The latter was a splendid 
swimmer, but after piloting many boats safely through the Shoals 
he lost a boat and was drowned in Squaw* Shoals in 1861. James 
Cain and Stephen. Busby were among the first to gather coal 
from the bottom of Lost Creek and flatboat it to Mobile. They 
were paid as high as ten dollars a ton for their first shipments. 
James Cain was active from the beginning in the mining, hand- 
ling, and shipping of coal on the Warrior and its tributaries, and 
his friends claim for him that he was the first coal operator in 
Alabama. William Whitson dug coal out of Wolf Creek about 
1837. His first shipments were from the lower sections of the 
creek, not far from where it empties into Lost Creek. 

"The streams were all too shallow for boats during the dry 



54 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



summer months. During this time there was all along Warrior 
River and its tributary streams much activity in the gathering of 
coal, building of boats, working of crops, manufacture of staves, 
and raising of stock. The average size of a flatboat was seventy 
feet long by twenty-five feet wide. The average cost of it was 
seventy dollars, the estimate being a dollar a foot measured in the 
length. The average size of a keel was sixty feet by sixteen. The 
boats were loaded in the dry season and when the freshets of the 
fall season came they were pushed out into th^ swollen waters 
and steered down the river. 

" The population of the county in 1830 was 2,202. It was ten 
years later before this number was doubled, and fifty years before 
it reached 10,000. The people were sturdy, honest, industrious, 
and independent, and many of them were restlessly striving for 
business conveniences. The river shoals were always under dis- 
cussion and study. The continuous reports of the dangers and 
difficulties in transporting products on the river secured a 
government contract in 1835 to Richard Chilton and James 
Cain to clean out Squaw Shoals and direct the current of the 
waters so that keels and flatboats could pass over them with less 
danger. The work was duly undertaken, and some good was 
effected, but the dangers of passage were still so great that the 
little relief through the government contract work was scarcely 
reckoned in the course of business. 

" The Squaw Shoals are twenty-six miles above Tuskaloosa 
and they extend seven miles up the river. About seven miles 
above these are Black Rock Shoals where the last work was done 
under a government contract on the Shoals in the Warrior River 
in Walker County. The contract for this work was awarded in 
1850 to Robert Cain, son of James Cain, whose bond was signed 
by John Gurgainus, Sr. The two agreed to take the contract 
together, and they arranged that one of them would sign the con- 
tract and the other would endorse it, thus meeting the government 
requirements. This work was to dam the waters on the south side 
and throw them to the north bank, and thereby make a safer 
channel. 

" In the early forties a good deal of coal mining was under- 
taken. Jacob Gibson and others, across the river from Cordova, 
raised coal out of the bottom of the river, prizing it up with crow- 
bars and loading it into boats. Jacob Phillips, the Sanderses, the 
Burtons, and the Gravlees were also engaged in mining coal. 
William Gravlee, the elder of the family, ran a transportation 
line of boats. 

"Judge William Howlette shipped coal from Bench Field, 
near the railroad bridge on the side with Cordova. The Bordens 
also shipped from this neighborhood, mining out further from 
the river where F. B. Miller is now mining. James Davis, Wil- 
liam Robertson, Reuben Morgan, James Hancock, John Sullivan 
and others dug coal out of the bottom and the banks of the river 



EARLY RECORDS 



55 



near Dora, and also out of the banks and the bottom of Horse 
Creek and Barton's Creek and boated it in the early forties. 
Richard Chilton, who contracted with James Cain to clean out 
Squaw Shoals, shipped boat loads of stock to Mobile. It is said 
that as the boats reached Squaw Shoals he would show his un- 
easiness by the anxious expression on his face and by his perfect 
silence and by his gently scratching his head until the pilot got his 
boat safely over. About one boat in every eight that passed into 
the shoals was lost. 

" J esse Yan Hoose and James Cain owned the land near the 
mouth of Lost Creek on which was sunk in 1839 the first coal 
shaft in Walker County. Gideon, Gordon, and Joe Frierson were 
in charge of the work and the shaft is known as Frierson's shaft. 
It is claimed that this was the first active mine and coal shaft 
sunk in Alabama. A hand windlass was the shaft-lift. It 
brought up a tub of coal as another was let down to be loaded. 
T. W. Price, a son-in-law of James Cain, lived near by, and at his 
home Professor Tuomey found coal which he pronounced equal 
to cannel coal. Jesse Yan Hoose was State senator for Pickens, 
Marion, Tuskaloosa, and Walker counties from 1825 to 1827. 
He was a thrifty man and owned interests in a good deal of coal 
lands. James Cain settled in Walker County territory before it 
was formed into a county. He was a native of South Carolina, 
and his wife, Elizabeth Cauley, was also of this State. On a visit 
to South Carolina he was sandbagged by an Indian. At the time 
Mr. Cain had in his arms his daughter Elizabeth, now the widow 
of Major F. A. Musgrove and the mother of L. B. Musgrove, 
J. C. Musgrove, and Miss Calpurnia Musgrove. 

" The records show that Mr. Cain entered lands in 1823 near 
Wolf Creek and on lower Wolf Creek in 1832. He represented the 
county in four sessions of the legislature. Mr. Cain was a Whig 
and was active in State and county politics. The two political 
leaders of the county were James Cain, a Whig, and General John 
Menasco, a Democrat. Mr. Cain was a quiet man, with stave 
plants, mills, farm, ginnery, stock raising, and coal mining as the 
basis of his business. He was a leader of men, and his election 
was solely by reason of his natural abilities and his practical ser- 
vices to his times. 

" Mr. Cain was born in Edgefield, South Carolina, in 1796, 
and died in Birmingham in 1887. William Garrett in ' Remi- 
niscences ' says of him : ' He was a man of good habits, of very 
little pretension, and grew largely in the esteem of the public 
men for the probity and consistency of his character. By industry 
and economy he had acquired before the war a good property, 
and was hospitable and charitable in his relations to society. He 
is a favorable specimen of a class of men who have been aptly 
styled the bone and sinew of the country. Without the aid of 
books, he possessed a sound, practical judgment in the every-day 
affairs of life, doing justice to all men and requiring the same 



56 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



equivalent. In proportion as his character was understood it was 

increased in public estimation.' 

" Walker County was divided in 1850 by an east and west line. 
The northern section was formed into Hancock County. Eight 
years later the name was changed to Winston. Jasper lay on the 
road from Tuskaloosa to Huntsville, and the travel passing to and 
fro made it of much importance. It is on land that was settled 
by Dr. Edward Gordon Musgrove who had emigrated from South 
Carolina before. Alabama was admitted into the Union. Dr. 
Musgrove gave the land on which now stands the courthouse of 
Walker County, and he may justly be called the founder of 
Jasper. He was a successful physician and a classical scholar. 
He was the first judge of the county court of Walker County. 
During the trial of cases he sat on a big rock near which is another 
larger rock on which sat the jury. These two rocks can be seen 
to-day just outside the yard of the Musgrove home in Jasper. 
Dr. Musgrove was the father of Francis A. Musgrove, who was 
first the captain of Company C, Twenty-eighth Alabama Regi- 
ment, and who was afterwards promoted to major. 

" Major Francis A. Musgrove mined coal before 1850 in part- 
nership with Rufus Jones. This was in Bull Bottom about a 
mile from Cane Creek. The coal had to be hauled to the water 
to be boated. Mr. George Shipp Gaines says of Major Mus- 
grove, ' He had much to do with the digging and shipping of coal. 
He was a man to take charge of an enterprise and move it to 
success. Breck (Musgrove), his son, has many of his traits and 
looks like him.' 

" Major Musgrove was not only a strong business man, but 
he was a genial, joyous, companionable associate with his fellow- 
men. As indicating his humor, it is reported that on one of his 
numerous trips to Mobile on flatboats, he and his companions 
had not shaved for some time, and their long beards tempted him 
to a proposition that all should shave on one side of the face after 
the fashion of a religious order in the eastern world. He rep- 
resented that it would put Mobile on the edge of curiosity to 
know why the strange manner of shaving, and that some whole- 
some fun would be enjoyed. All on the boat complied. Just 
before reaching Mobile Major Musgrove managed to finish shav- 
ing his face, stepped out on deck with the others, and threw 
into the river the only razor that was on the boat. The men 
chased him and threw coal at him as he laughed and dodged 
until the boat touched the bank at the landing when he leaped 
ashore and ran up into the city, leaving the others to make their 
explanation until they could get a shave. 

"Judge A. A. Coleman says of Major Musgrove that he was 
one of the handsomest men that he ever saw. He made a gallant 
soldier. He was severely wounded at Murfreesboro, and was 
sent home with orders to enlist men who had not entered the 
Confederate army. The dominant sentiment of the county was 



EARLY RECORDS 



57 



in sympathy with the Confederate cause, but there was a con- 
siderable Union element among the people. Robert Guttery, the 
county's delegate to the Secession Convention in 1861, was one 
of the twenty-four members of the convention who did not sign 
the Ordinance of Secession. A large number of men were not 
enlisted for war. Drastic measures were committed to Major 
Musgrove, but he managed so tactfully and so persuasively that 
he secured, without arresting men, two battalions for active 
service at the front. One of these battalions was sent to the 
armies in Virginia and Georgia ; the other, Musgrove's Battalion, 
Major Musgrove led under Forrest to the close of the war. 

" The roads leading from Tuskaloosa to The Falls, were contin- 
uously traveled by wagons loaded with cotton, corn, and other 
products for transportation on regular steamboats down the 
rivers. On their return the wagons were filled with merchan- 
dise. Blacksmith shops, grist mills, saw mills, flour mills, tan- 
neries, ginneries, brickyards, and stave and shingle plants were 
among the industries of antebellum days. Among the most 
extensive of the mill plants was that of Dr. Moses Camak on 
Blackwater Creek in Section 15, Township 13, Range 7 west. The 
native coal was much used in the blacksmith shops, though a good 
deal of manufactured charcoal was used. 

"Mr. Mortimer Corry, John Gurgainus, W. A. Thompson, 
Claiborne Ballenger, and Captain Felix Hanby are to-day full 
of reminiscences of their wild trips over Squaw Shoals with 
boatloads of marketable products." 



CHAPTER V 



IRON MAKING AND COAL MINING IN TUSKALOOSA COUNTY, 

1830-1861 

Founding town of Tuskaloosa. Establishment of Roupes Valley Iron 
Works. Incoming of Daniel Hillman. Connection with early iron mak- 
ing of New Jersey, Ohio, and Kentucky. Certain properties of Tennes- 
see Company, Republic Company, Central Coal and Iron Company, and 
Birmingham Coal and Iron Company indirectly associated with Hill- 
man venture. Purchase of Roupes Valley Forge by Ninion Tannehill. 
Records of Tannehill family. Visit of Sir Charles Lyell. Moses Stroup 
acquires Tannehill Iron Works. History of Stroup family, pioneer iron- 
masters of Georgia and the Carolinas. Coal mined in Tuskaloosa in 
1831. Coming of William Goold. Character sketch of the well-known 
coal miner and prospector. 

THE three counties, Blount, Jefferson, and Walker, re- 
ceived but meager iron supply until the erection, in 
1830, of the Roupes Valley Iron Works, known later 
as Old Tannehill, in Tuskaloosa County. This county, created 
by the territorial legislature out of the Chickasaw and Choctaw ces- 
sions of 1818, was the seat of the new capital of Alabama. Cahaba 
had followed St. Stephens as political headquarters, but in 1826 
gave place to Tuskaloosa, which remained the State capital until 
succeeded by Montgomery in 1846. The old town of Tuskaloosa, 
known as the Druid City by reason of the long rows of giant 
water oaks that brood over its wide and silent streets, stands on 
a plateau at the falls of the Warrior River. It was first settled 
in 1816 and was incorporated in 1819. As site of the capital 
and the University of Alabama it early became an educational 
center. In an industrial way it served the Hill Country as 
chief market town and general distributing point. Roupes Val-< 
ley Iron Works were started four years after the town was 
voted the State capital. 

It seems that in the fall of 1830 an old furnaceman, Daniel 
Hillman by name, came up to Tuskaloosa County in the inter- 
ests of Colonel Ralph McGehee of Montgomery. He built a 
forge on Roupes Creek in Roupes Valley at a point near the 
meeting lines of the four counties, Tuskaloosa, Jefferson, Bibb, 



IRON MAKING AND COAL MINING 59 



and Shelby, where a market could be commanded. With the 
richest pockets of brown ore Hillman had ever come across, 
within bow shot of the site, with a bluff, water power, good 
farming ground for the laborers, and plenty of timber for plank 
and charcoal, he found the makings for an iron works ready to 
his hand. He set to work at once, and named his forge Eoupes 
Valley Iron Works. 

Very little was known about Daniel Hillman in Alabama, 
but he appears to have been very well liked. Several of his 
workmen and a number of the neighboring farmers named their 
sons after the kindly, hard-working old forge builder, so pro- 
found was their respect for him. He had come among them, 
it seems, an utter stranger, under shadow of a grief. He was of 
Dutch stock. His ancestors had been iron makers for centuries. 
His father only had deviated from the trade, and, leaving Holland 
shortly before the American Eevolution, had settled with his 
family in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The little twenty-acre 
patch of ground near the Delaware River where the Continental 
Hotel and the United States Bank stand at the present time was 
purchased by the first Hillman family in the United States and 
here they started the dairy business. The father, however, 
trained his boys, Daniel H. and James, to the wagon making 
and blacksmith trade. There were various reverses: the father 
died, two of the children died, and the little dairy farm was sold 
for taxes. The two boys went over to New Jersey and they 
worked hard. After some years Daniel began to prosper at his 
trade. He got enough capital to set up a plant in 1814 near 
old Valley Forge; he married, bought a farm, a store, and two 
schooners. But before his iron works had paid costs, a violent 
freshet one night uprooted every vestige of them. His partner 
decamped, leaving a burden of debts, to meet which, Hillman 
was forced to surrender his every possession. 

Once clear, he struck out for the West, riding off on mule back 
to look for a new iron country. He went to Chillicothe, then the 
capital of Ohio, and built a little forge on Paint Creek, about 
1819, which is one of the earliest on record in Ohio. Two or 
three years later, after his plucky wife and his five children 
joined him, the family emigrated to Kentucky, where in Bath 
County Daniel Hillman put up another forge. With the help 
of his four sons, Daniel, Jr., James, George, and Charles, every 
one of whom later made his mark in the iron business of Ken- 



60 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



tucky, Tennessee, and Alabama, the indefatigable old Dutch- 
man put up, in 1823, his furnace and iron works at Greenup- 
burg, Kentucky, made flatboats, dug coal, and shipped coal and 
iron to Cincinnati. His wife worked shoulder to shoulder with 
him and with the boys, and it was a rough life for all of them. 
Their one daughter, Jane Hillman, married Justus Buck Good- 
rich, whose son, Levin S. Goodrich, in the year 1876, made the 
first coke pig iron of Alabama, at Oxmoor, in Daniel Troy's 
term as president of the Red Mountain Company. 

Daniel Hillman was used to working late and early, but when 
his good wife died the old man lost his grip and some of 
his impetus to business. Restless, he wandered back to Ohio, 
where for a few months he managed the Pine Grove Steam 
furnace at Hanging Rock. Later, with Casting Goodrich and 
his son-in-law, Justus B. Goodrich, he went to New Orleans. 

The Goodriches had a shipment of iron to carry to Mobile. 
In the harbor there they found a ship disabled for want of a cast- 
ing. Goodrich did repair work such as surprised the crew. To 
meet with a skilled iron-master in a wild country like Ala- 
bama was a thing most unexpected. For Cedar Creek's record, 
away off in northwest Alabama, was a sealed book to the 
southern half of the State. 

There were rumors, however, of a mineral region, floating 
around the old Spanish streets, and Daniel Hillman, always on 
the scent for an iron country, followed them to Roupes Valley. 
Here in Tuskaloosa County he gained new courage and strength. 
A letter from the old iron-master to his son George, dated August 
21, 1830, from Valley Forge, Bibb County, Alabama, is as fol- 
lows: 

Dear Son : These lines will inform you that I am well, and 
I hope that you and your brothers, sister and son, are the same. 
I shall start one forge for Colonel McGehee in about four or five 
weeks, and then expect to build a sawmill for myself. I can 
sell about two thousand dollars' worth of plank. I can cut pine 
timber on Uncle Sam's land, a practice very generally prevailing 
in this country. Colonel McGehee will assist me in any way, so 
I can get him a-going in a short time. He will want material 
for his furnace which he will commence building about Christ- 
mas. I am to superintend the building of it, and immediately 
afterwards the building of another forge unless something pre- 
vents. 

I believe, George, that my prospects for making a handsome 
property are better than they ever were during all the course of 



IRON MAKING AND COAL MINING 61 



my life. I wrote to Daniel and desired him to come to this 
country; for there is one of the best prospects I ever saw for 
him to make a fortune. I shall write to him and give particulars 
of the prospects. It is as healthy here as in any part of 
Kentucky. 

I have had my health. I believe better, for I have gained 
considerably in weight since I have been here. I hope to come 
and see you in March, for I can go> from here to Nashville in five 
days by stage, and then take the steamboat. 

Give my love to Daniel, Jane and Charles. 

From your father, 

Daniel Hillman. 

j 

Just two years after this the old man took sick and died. 
Mourned by all of those with whom he had close dealing, he 
was buried in the little graveyard near Bucksville. His son 
Daniel came to Alabama late in the eighteen-sixties and bought 
large mineral properties in Jones Valley which are now owned 
by the Tennessee Company and by the Birmingham Coal and 
Iron Company. His grandson, T. T. Hillman, became one of 
the group of Alabama iron-masters connected with the Tennessee 
Company, and also founded, with H. E. McCormack, the Pratt 
Consolidated Coal Company, nearly three generations later. 

In reference to the early forge of Tannehill, Baylis Grace 
writes as follows: 

"Several planters with means, among them Ralph McGehee 
and Richard B. Walker, settled on the north side of the Cahaba 
River. Impressed with the immense deposits of brown hema- 
tite ore in Roupes Valley, they decided to try the experiment of 
making iron on a cheap scale for the Jefferson County settlers, 
the nearest market for bar iron being then at. Tuskaloosa. The 
company got Hillman of New J ersey and erected a little furnace 
on a bold little stream which runs across Roupes Valley and 
flows into Shades Creek. Here a large hammer propelled by 
water hammered out the best kind, of tough metal and supplied 
the counties for some distance around with plows, horseshoes, 
and hollow ware." 

The brown ore mines that old Daniel Hillman opened, known 
as Goethite, are owned and operated to-day by the Republic 
Company. Also working mines in the immediate vicinity, at 
present time, are the Tennessee Company and the Central 
Coal and Iron Company, while the site of Hillman's forge and 
the ruins of the Tannehill furnace are now owned by the Re- 
public Company. 



62 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



After old Daniel Hillman's death the Roupes Valley forge 
lay silent until 1836, when it was bought by Ninion Tannehill, 
a cotton planter. Colonel Tannehill had come into Alabama 
in 1818 from South Carolina. His marriage to Mary, daughter 
of Jonathan Prude of Jefferson County, in 1819, is the first on 
record in the Old Elyton courthouse. The young couple located 
in Jonesboro, but after obtaining lands in Tuskaloosa County, 
they moved there. William W. Tannehill, of Comanche, 
Texas, a great nephew of Colonel Tannehill, sends the following 
record : 

" The Tannehill family originated in Scotland something more 
than 700 years since. The family started from a foundling 
boy, who was discovered early one morning on the side of a hill 
by an old man and his wife, who were out hunting up their 
calves. As the little boy was only two years old and could not 
give any account of himself, the old couple adopted him, and gave 
him the name of Tannochill, after the name of the hill upon 
which he was found, and the name has since been changed to 
that of Tannehill. This is a matter of public records of 
Scotland. 

" During the early settlement of the State of Pennsylvania 
there came over from Scotland a family of seven brothers by the 
name of Tannehill, who settled in that State, and one of those 
seven brothers, whose name was Philip, came down into North 
Carolina and raised a large family. One of his sons by the 
name of James coming to South Carolina, also raised a large 
family, among whom was Mnion Tannehill. When these five 
brothers became of age they all came to the State of Alabama, 
settling in different parts of the State. 

"Ninion is the one who settled some distance above Tuskaloosa 
and was the owner of some twenty negro slaves and engaged 
first in farming and stock raising, but later began the making 
of iron. In August, 1849, he had his iron factory in full blast 
at that time and for some time before." 

In the year 1846 the great English geologist, Sir Charles 
Lyell, visited this region. His description is minute and precise. 

" Starting in a northeasterly direction," he narrates, ee we 
first entered a hilly country formed of sandstone, grit, and shale 
of the coal formation, precisely like the strata in which coal 
occurs in England. These hills were covered with long-leaved 
pines, and the large proportion they bear to the hard wood is 
said to have been increased by the Indian practice of burning the 
grass, — the bark of the oak and other kinds of hard wood being 
more combustible, and more easily injured by fire, than that of 




IRON MAKING AND COAL MINING 63 



the fir tribe. Everywhere the young seedlings of the long-leaved 
pines were coming up in such numbers that one might have 
supposed the ground to have been sown with them; and I was 
reminded how rarely we see similar self-sown firs in English 
plantations. When we had gone about twenty miles northeast 
of Tuskaloosa, we came to a higher country, where nearly all the 
pines disappeared, and were replaced by oak, hickory, sumac, 
gum-trees, sassafras, and many others. In some clearings here, 
as in Georgia and Carolinas, the quantity of cordage of wood 
fit for charcoal produced in thirty years by the new growth, is 
said, from its greater density, to have equaled the wood con- 
tained in the aboriginal forest. 

" Near the banks of the Black Warrior Eiver, we examined 
several open quarries of coal, where the edges of the beds have 
been dug into by different proprietors, no regular mining op- 
erations having as yet been attempted. Even at the outcrop the 
coal is of most excellent quality, and highly bituminous, and I 
soon satisfied myself that the strata were not of the age of the 
Eichmond coal before described, but were as ancient as that of 
the Alleghany Hills, or of Western Virginia. In the beds of 
black shale covering each coal seam, were impressions of fossil 
plants, precisely similar to those occurring in the ancient coal 
measures of Europe and America. . . . 

"According to Professor Brumby, this coal field of the War- 
rior Eiver is ninety miles long from north to south, and from 
ten to thirty miles in breadth, and includes in it some coal 
seams not less than ten feet thick. It forms a southern pro- 
longation of the great Appalachian coal field, with which I was 
unacquainted when I compiled my map, published in 18-15, of 
the geology of North America. Its geographical situation is 
peculiarly interesting; for, being situated in latitude 33° 10' 
north, it constitutes at present the extreme southern limit to 
which the ancient carboniferous vegetation has been traced, in 
the northern hemisphere, whether on the east or west side ' of 
the Atlantic. 

" Continuing our route into the upland country, we entered, 
about thirty-three miles northeast of Tuskaloosa, a region called 
Eoupes Valley, where rich beds of ironstone and limestone bid 
fair, from their proximity to the coal, to become one day a 
source of great mineral wealth. At present the country has been 
suffered to retrograde, and the population to grow less numerous 
than it was twenty years ago, owing to migrations to Louisiana 
and Texas, and partly to the unthriftiness of slave labor. 

"We traveled in a carriage with two horses, and could ad- 
vance but a few miles a day, so execrable and often dangerous 
was the state of the roads. Occasionally we had to get out and 
call at a farmhouse to ask the proprietors leave to take down 
his snake fence, to avoid a deep mud hole in the road. Our 
vehicle was then driven over a stubble field of Indian corn, at 



64 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



the end of which we made our exit, some fifty yards on, by pull- 
ing down another part of the fence." 

Captain H. H. Cribbs, who clerked in a store near Tannehill 
in 1847, recollects that the furnaces were then run on full time, 
and that there was a foundry in connection with them. The 
ore was mined at the old Goethite quarries, some three miles 
distant from the furnaces, and brought first by ox teams, and 
later transported by a crude tramway, the roadbed of which is 
discernible to-day. The product was made, he says, into ovens, 
skillets, and kettles. These cooking vessels were sent in wagons, 
south, overland to Tuskaloosa, Selma, and many points in the 
Black Belt. 

In 1855 the plant was sold by Colonel Tannehill to the 
experienced iron-master, Moses Stroup. On the site of the " old- 
timey-forge" a new plant was erected, whose ruins are to-day 
known far and wide as the most interesting and picturesque ex- 
ample of the old way of furnace building extant in the South. 

Moses Stroup, before coming into the State, had been identi- 
fied with iron making in the Carolinas and in Georgia. " He 
was," Miss Duffee observes, " a remarkable genius in his way. 
He seemed to be endowed with a natural talent and intense 
personal fondness for the useful industry he so early chose as 
his profession, as will be shown by the fact that during his life- 
time he built seven different furnaces and five rolling mills." 
John E. Ware says : " Moses Stroup, at the time of his death, 
in 1877, was the oldest and most experienced iron maker of the 
South. He built the first rolling mill in South Carolina, and 
made the first railroad iron ever made in the South. He be- 
came rich in the business." 

The Stroup family were iron makers from Colonial days. 
David Stroup was a soldier and gun maker of the Continental 
Army. When he left Pennsylvania, after the Revolution, for 
North Carolina, he took with him, as his assistant, his fifteen- 
year-old boy, Jacob Stroup. They put up iron works in Lin- 
coln County. From there young Jacob Stroup moved to South 
Carolina and built the first iron works of that State. 1 

"He was a man of indomitable energy and a great worker," 
writes his son. " He had no schooling. He was a fine rifle shot 

1 Information received from R. S. Hickman of Ensley, Alabama, and 
Jacob D. Stroup, Jr., of Hot Springs, Arkansas, only surviving brother of 
Moses Stroup. 



Group of Pioneer Ironmasters 




1. Thomas Peter 

2. Moses Stroup 

3. Jonathan N. Smith 



1. Horace Ware 

2. Michael Tuomey, First State Geologist 

3. Daniel Hillman, Jr. 



IRON MAKING AND COAL MINING 65 



and. the best judge of men and horses I ever knew. He raised a 
company during the War of 1812, of which he was captain. He 
sold out his iron works in South Carolina to Colonel Nesbit, in 
1827, leaving my brother, Moses, with Nesbit. They did a large 
business, casting cannon for the Nullification Party in South 
Carolina. My father settled in Habersham county of Georgia, 
in 1828, and built the first iron plant in the State of Georgia. 
This was before the Indians had left the country. In 1836 he 
sold out and built another plant on Stamp Creek, Cass County, 
Georgia, comprising blast furnace, forge, and saw and grist mills. 
His clerk and bookkeeper for many years was Noah Goode, with 
whom he engaged, early in the eighteen-forties, to build iron 
works in Calhoun County, Alabama. I remember the occurrence 
of the cannon bursting. My father was a great Democrat. He 
walked a good many miles to vote for Polk. He made much 
money, but lost heavily in a gold mine. My brother Moses joined 
him in Cass County, Georgia, in 1843, and bought him out. 
He then built another furnace at Altoona and was operating this 
when he died, October 8, 1846." 

Moses Stroup, the oldest son of Jacob Stroup, Sr., was born 
in Lincoln County, North Carolina, in 1794, and was brought 
up to the iron business. His brother writes : " In those days 
schooling was not up, and Moses had none, only what he got by 
pine knot light. But all his life he was a great student, well 
posted on every subject, and he became a man of fine judgment. 
He was always a good money maker, but a poor keeper. He 
did more in the iron industry in the South in his day and time 
than any other man. His knowledge of the construction and 
operation of blast furnaces was wonderful/' 

After Moses Stroup bought out his father in Georgia, he en- 
larged the plant, built more furnaces, a rolling mill and a flour 
mill. He took Mark A. Cooper into partnership with him, 
and in 1847 sold out to Cooper and Wiley. The Cass County 
plant was then operated by Cooper and Wiley until the Civil War, 
when it was destroyed by General Sherman. It was at this 
rolling mill that Moses Stroup made the first railroad iron in 
the South; it was strap iron, used on the Old State Eoad, which 
is now the Western and Atlantic Railroad. In 1848 Moses 
Stroup came into Alabama. He prospected through Cherokee 
County and took up several hundred acres of ore lands from 
the Government. He started building his Round Mountain 
furnace in 1849, on the site of a forge erected by William Mil- 
ner, and Henry Milner went into partnership with him. 

5 



66 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



Moses Stroup tested Red Mountain ore and found it possible 
to use. There was a bigger demand for his castings, his pig 
iron, pots, and skillets than he could supply. In Michael Tuo- 
mey's report is the following letter from Moses Stroup, dated 
Round Mountain Furnace, March 18, 1855: 

" Round Mountain was first put in operation in April, 1852, 
and has been in operation most of the time since. It has pro- 
duced two and one half tons metal per day, and consumed on 
an average of six hundred fifty bushels of charcoal per day. A 
portion of the metal is converted into hollow ware and machinery, 
which is sold in this State, the balance is run into pigs, which find 
a market in Georgia. The ore used is the red fossiliferous kind. 
It is taken from the side of the mountain, very near the furnace, 
where it lies in strata from ten to twenty-four inches in thickness ; 
and is delivered at top of furnace at sixty cents per ton. This 
ore, when properly treated, makes the best quality of iron for 
castings and foundry pig. 

" The furnace is thirty-two feet high, eight feet in the boshes, 
and driven by steam power, the steam generated by the waste heat 
of the furnace, blown by a cold blast. The number of hands em- 
ployed for all purposes connected with the furnace is forty-five. 
It is over half a mile from the Coosa River, on which is shipped 
the pig iron to Rome, Georgia. There is an abundance of good 
limestone within a mile of the furnace." 

A matter spoken of in the correspondence between Moses 
Stroup and Richard Fell at this time was Stroup's introduction 
of small machinery to make iron into salable sizes. Early in 
1855 Stroup sold out the Round Mountain plant to P. S. Mar- 
shall of Eddyville, Kentucky. It then passed into the hands of 
Captain J. M. Elliott of Rome, Georgia, who rebuilt and enlarged 
it. It was destroyed in the Civil War, but again rebuilt by 
Captain Elliott, and the Round Mountain Coal and Iron Com- 
pany organized in 1870. 

The capacity of the furnace was increased to twenty-five tons 
per day. It made high grade chilling iron, used mainly for car 
wheels and rolls of rolling mills. It was shipped to Pittsburg, 
Pennsylvania, to Rome, Georgia, in the early eighteen-seventies 
and to Gadsden, Alabama, after 1887; was used by the rail 
makers until the age of steel. 1 

After coming into Tuskaloosa County, and closing his trade 
with Colonel Tannehill, Moses Stroup began at once the con- 
struction of his big group of furnaces. He used slave labor, and 
1 Captain J. M. Elliott, Jr., of Gadsden, Alabama. 



IRON MAKING AND COAL MINING 67 



cut his own timber, quarried the sandstone, constructing the 
furnaces by means of skids. He built a tramway to the ore 
fields, and saw and flour mills. He made plows, axes, fire- 
dogs, and all kinds of hollow ware. His coaling bed was a mile 
east of the furnaces. He took John Alexander into partnership. 1 

Machinery was brought from Philadelphia. A flourishing 
little settlement grew up in the vicinity of the furnaces. 

A foundry was built just south of the single furnace and cast 
sheds and a cast house near the double furnaces. The furnaces 
were constructed of huge bowlders of sandstone, each weighing 
four hundred pounds, and the inwalls, bosh, and crucibles were 
lined with fire brick imported from Stowbridge, England. The 
stone jacket was fashioned precisely like the early furnaces of 
England and Wales. A rough log trestle from the high bridge 
on its near side carried the teams laden with the furnace burden. 
Something like 3,400 acres of heavy timber were cut down 
during the life of the old furnaces for charcoal. 

" The great difficulty in getting men of capital to come here 
from the North," wrote Moses Stroup, in 1859, " is, you cannot 
get them to believe what we say about this country, and they 
won't believe it is healthy here." In 1862 Moses Stroup sold 
the Tannehill furnaces to his partner and accepted the position 
of superintendent and manager of the Oxmoor furnaces in Jef- 
ferson County. 

Additional records pertaining to this historic plant of Tuska- 
loosa County will be noted in the war period. Old Tannehill is, 
perhaps, the most haunting of all the early charcoal furnaces of 
Alabama. Its ruins still stand in silent watch at the base of a 
lonely cliff, above Roupes Creek, that slender dark-flowing trib- 
utary of Shades Creek. Two massive stacks of solid masonry, 
builded as the Romans builded twenty centuries ago, great stone 
on stone — vine-veiled these forty years — are all that is left 
to-day of Moses Stroup's handiwork. Solemnly the old furnace 
speaks of the heavy ways of toil, long since dead, that our 
fathers had before us. 

Majestic in the forest, yet ruling no more, it has a burdened, 
solitary heart. And it is so quiet here ; so grave, so still. The 
very shadows seem to sleep, even as the stones; and the drowsy 
sun rays circling them are but the brushing wings of evanescent 
dreams. 

1 A, A. Hanbury of Birmingham, Alabama. 



68 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



Coal had been mined in Tuskaloosa County as far back as 
1831, in the vicinity of the State University 1 and shipped in 
flatboats to Mobile. It was also sold at the University at four 
cents a bushel. This is one of the earliest dates recorded in coal 
operations of the State. Early in the eighteen-fifties a coal 
miner, William L. Goold, by name, came to this country from 
Scotland and leased the old coal pits known as HewelPs Mines, 
and employed some slave labor. " Anthracite coal from Penn- 
sylvania was selling in Alabama in November, 1854, at forty 
dollars per ton," Goold relates. He says, too, that he started 
making coke at once, the first coke made in Alabama. This he 
sold to Leach's foundry for eight dollars per ton, and cut out the 
anthracite trade. 

William L. Goold, or " Uncle Billy/' as he is known to-day, was 
a coal miner's son, born in 1830, near Glasglow, Scotland. He 
grew up in the mines at Verterville and Sankerton, but he did 
not earn much beyond a few shillings a week. Just before his 
wedding day he decided to go to Australia with his bride, and 
try his fortunes. 

"I told Jeannie," said he, "and she said, 'Very well, Wil- 
liam, you can go to Australia, if you like, and you can get you an 
Australian wife. I dinna leave Scotland. So I will stay here 
and get me a Scotch husband.' " Deciding not to go to Australia, 
he became Jeannie's husband. But the times were hard. " I 
could na stand it more," said Goold, " so I decided to come to 
America. I had Jeannie then. We had our small house and 
little bit of furniture which we had to sell at auction. Jeannie 
cried, but my father said to me, 6 1 glory in y'r spunk, William. 
I 'd do the same myself, if I were a young mon again ! ' So I 
set sail, leaving Jeannie with my parents until I should make a 
place for her in America." 

Billy Goold wandered through the coal regions of Pennsyl- 
vania, Virginia, and Maryland. In three years he made enough 
money to send for Jeannie and the boy. " I had na then seen 
that boy of mine ; just think o' it ! " said Uncle Billy. They 
reached Philadelphia in October of 1854. Goold ran across an 
advertisement in the Philadelphia Sun, calling for coal miners 
at Tuskaloosa, Alabama, and offering fair inducements. He set 
out at once for the South. Here his business prospered until 

1 The late John Murray Forbes of Tuskaloosa and Birmingham, 
Alabama. 



IRON MAKING AND COAL MINING 69 



hot weather set in. Then everything in the coal business fell 
into a dead swoon. 

The Scotch coal miner drifted from one county to another. 
He managed the mines near Montevallo, in Shelby County, for 
the Alabama Coal Mining Company; he opened up the Raglan 
Mines in the Coosa coal field, in St. Clair County, and sent 
from fifty to a hundred boatloads of coal a year down to We- 
tumpka, Montgomery, and Mobile, until the outbreak of the 
Civil War. Early in the war he acquired seventeen hundred acres 
of coal lands near Helena, in Shelby County, and sunk a shaft 
one hundred and thirty feet deep near the Cahaba Bridge and a 
slope some four hundred feet. He got out seventy-five tons of 
coal per day, all of which was carried direct to the Confederate 
Arsenal and Naval Foundry at Selma. His partners in this en- 
terprise were Charles and Fred Woodson. " We operated these 
mines all during the war, and I would have kept on but Wilson 
and his raiders destroyed all our work in 1865, and burned me 
out. Wilson burned three thousand tons of my coal. So after 
that I sold out and went into the cotton broker's" business in 
Selma." 

In a subsequent chapter it is related how Billy Goold went 
prospecting up into the Warrior Field at the time of the birth 
of Birmingham and hit upon the famous coal seam, later known 
as Pratt. v 

"Michael Tuomey^told me," said Uncle Billy, "that if I 
could ever find the black band seam of iron ore, the State would 
give me five hundred dollars as a bonus. I looked high and low 
for it. I found it at New Castle in 1870, but I dinna find 
trace of the cash." 

Uncle Billy made in his day a fair amount of money, but he 
always sold out, and made for the woods after more coal. His 
last mining venture was in Tuskaloosa County in 1892, and here 
he lost out. A little later his house caught fire, and all was lost. 
" Even my hat was burned up," said the old man. 



CHAPTER VI 



BIBB AND SHELBY COUNTIES, 1820-1861 



Pioneer forge and furnace builders. Character of operations. Exhibit of 
Bibb County blooms at Sydenham exposition. Biography of Jonathan 
Ware. Reminiscences of Camp's Bloomery. Sketch of Jonathan Newton 
Smith. Discovery of coal near Daileys Creek. " Stones on fire ! " Origin 
of one of Galloway Coal Company's mines. Story of Old Uncle Joe. 
Description of Brighthope furnace. " There 's enough ore around here 
to run a hundred furnaces a hundred years ! " Work of William P. 
Browne and Robert Thomas. Present day appearance of Brighthope 
ruins. Horace Ware, "Chief of the early iron-masters." Early records 
of Shelby Iron Works. Facts and figures of blast furnace practice in 
eighteen-forties. Construction of Shelby Rolling Mill. 



J ohn T. Morgan, " chief of the early iron-masters of Alabama," 
Jonathan Newton Smith, James Camp, William P. Browne, Rob- 
ert Thomas, and the Mahans and Fanchers. 

There are in these two counties records of twelve separate 
iron works established before the war ; two furnaces, " Shelby " 
and " Brighthope," a rolling mill in Shelby County, nine forges or 
bloomeries ; Thompsons Mill forge, Camps bloomery, Adams dam 
forge, the Little Cahaba forge, Six Mile forge, Hills bloomery, 
Wilsons Creek forge, Wier and Scotts bloomeries, and the Camp 
Branch forge. From the early eighteen-thirties until the 
eighteen-sixties, these counties, together with Talladega, were the 
most active in the State in the making of iron blooms. 

Early coal operations on a slightly more advanced scale than 
those recorded of Tuskaloosa and Walker counties were likewise 
centered here, especially around Montevallo. In 1850, in Shelby 
County, there were two hundred men in the coal trade. 

Generally speaking, these operations in both coal and iron were 
of the crudest and most elementary character and at no time to 
be confounded with the present-day processes. The crude char- 
acter of construction, however, did not apply to the rolling mill 
erected and owned by Horace Ware in 1859. This rolling plant 




HE first iron making operations in Bibb and Shelby 
counties circle mainly about the names of Jonathan 
Ware, his son Horace Ware, termed by Senator 



BIBB AND SHELBY COUNTIES, 1820-1861 71 



of twelve tons daily capacity of merchantable bar iron was as 
up-to-date in its construction and operation as like enterprises 
in that day and time, in the North. The mill was complete in 
plan and equipment, and in addition to many sizes of wrought 
bar and plate produced, it turned out Alabama's first iron 
cotton ties, in 1860. 

An item furnished by Mrs. Jesse Mahan is that, in 1851, her 
father-in-law, Edward Mahan, together with Jonathan Ware, 
sent an exhibit of iron made at one of their Bibb County forges, 
to the great exhibition at Sydenham, England, where it took first 
prize among the specimens of charcoal iron blooms from many 
quarters of the world. There was another exhibit of Bibb County 
iron at the Vienna Exposition in 1878. In an earlier chapter 
allusion was made to the settlement of this portion of the mineral 
region at Mahans Creek, or Brierfield, by a group of Andrew 
Jackson's smiths and wagon makers. Bibb County, established 
under name of Cahaba County, in 1818, was early found to be 
rich in brown ore, coal beds, fire clay, and timber. 

The members of the Mahan family induced Jonathan Ware, a 
New England iron-master, then located in North Carolina, to 
come to their settlement and build a forge. This, situated on 
Shoal's Creek, and known as Thompsons Mill forge, was put up 
in 1820-22. It was removed to Wilsons Creek, near Montevallo 
in Shelby County, in 1825, and is among the few enumerated by 
Leslie as existing in that year. 

Jonathan Ware was originally from Needham, Massachusetts, 
where he was born in April, 1782. He had worked in various 
localities in Massachusetts, New York, and the Carolinas, taking 
his family with him as he pioneered in the several States. At 
the time he located in the Carolinas, the manufacture of bar 
iron in bloomeries was the main line of the iron industry. Ware 
became an expert hand in this primitive enterprise, and trained 
his son, Horace, to the business. In his work in Bibb and Shelby 
counties, he was associated from time to time with Mahan, Camp, 
Clabaugh, Smith, Fancher, and others. He died at Salt Creek 
furnace, in Talladega County, in 1864. 

Eecords of James Camp's bloomery have been received from his 
daughter, Mrs. Louisa M. Bockett of Fort Worth, Texas. 

"It was in the year of the great fall of stars/' writes Mrs. 
Bockett, "that Jonathan Ware and James Camp, my father, 
were camping out on Schultz Creek, and saw that strange hap- 



72 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



pening. Whenever, after this, my father mentioned the old char- 
coal forge that was given his name, he said it was begun when 
the stars fell. Jonathan Ware was its builder and original 
owner. It took him two years to gather material and construct 
the works which went into operation in 1835. A. M. Lathrop 
then bought it, and added improvements, but did not make it pay. 
My father bought it from Mr. Benson, superintendent of the 
Scottsville cotton factory, and ran it for nearly twenty years, 
until his death in 1858. 

" The forge was run by water power, and the ore crushed by 
big wheels. When the ore had melted into a large mass of red 
hot iron it was placed on the anvil under the great upraised 
hammer. The hammer man usually had a short bar of iron 
heated red hot, which he welded into the big burning mass with 
sledge hammers. Then the big hammer, run by water, pounded 
the iron into marketable shape. It took several reheatings before 
the bar reached the required shape, length, and thickness. My 
father got his iron ore near Tannehill, fifteen miles away, at 
first. But he soon found all he could use right on his own farm. 
He found a ready market for his bar iron, from nearby and from 
distant places. Tuskaloosa and Marion were chief markets. 

" I was born near the forge in 1834, and my first recollections 
are of big piles of bar iron stacked all around our back yard. My 
memory supplies me with many facts brought from this, the 
sweetest period of my life — my youth. I remember how every 
year, beginning with the late forties, the State geologist, Pro- 
fessor Tuomey, used to visit my father, who acted as his guide. 
My father knew the lay of the land like a book. The country 
was then a great hunting ground for bear, deer, and turkeys. 
My father carried the idea that coal would, in time, be found all 
over the land. Professor Tuomey saw a great future for that 
section. Some things said, however, come to my mind as a wav- 
ering memory, too dim to be affirmed. 

" My father was born in Pendleton District, South Carolina, 
in 1791. He entered Alabama with his wife in 1819, and settled 
first on the Cahaba River. Later he took up land on Schultz 
Creek. Circumstances made him a farmer. Nature would have 
made him a geologist and a mineralogist had he but had the ad- 
vantages necessary to develop his gifts. He was public-spirited, 
jovial, sociable. His latchstring always hung outside. He al- 
ways voted the Democratic ticket." 

After James Camp's death the forge was sold to Samuel L. 
Hamlet, but it was not operated by him. David M. Scott says : 

" The forge pond was two miles below Scottsville on Schultz 
Creek, the same creek that furnished the motive power to run the 
Scottsville cotton and woolen factory, which was built by my 
father, David Scott, in 1836." 



BIBB AND SHELBY COUNTIES, 1820-1861 73 



Mention of Camp's bloomery is also made by Tuomey. 

Three forges located at Adams Dam, on the Little Cahaba, 
and at Six Mile were put up by Jonathan Newton Smith. It was 
to his Little Cahaba forge that Baylis Grace brought his load of 
Ked Mountain ore and there demonstrated it could make iron. 
Six Mile is still spoken of. " Men are living to-day," remarked 
Frank Fitch, the son-in-law. of J. M. Smith, " who hauled iron 
in wagons from this forge to Perry County and into Mississippi." 

Concerning Jonathan Newton Smith, Mr. Fitch furnishes the 
following biographical sketch: 

"Jonathan Newton Smith was born at Sparta, Georgia, in 
1814. His father, Abington Smith, a planter and mill owner, 
came with his family into Alabama in 1823. Jonathan Smith 
became active in business affairs when a youth, serving as sheriff 
of the county, late in the thirties. He engaged in making iron 
with the forges or bloomeries then prevailing, and became 
identified with five iron works, three forges, a furnace, and a 
nailery on the Little Cahaba Eiver and its tributaries. He had 
a woolen mill and grist mill and bloomery on Six Mile Creek, four 
miles from his plantation home. Mr. Smith's plantation of more 
than two thousand acres was on the Little Cahaba Eiver. He 
raised in a season over two thousand bushels of wheat and carried 
on the flouring mill at Six Mile. He represented Bibb County 
in the legislature in the trying time of carpet-bag horror, and 
he strongly advocated the purchase by Alabama of the Florida 
extension between her and the Gulf. It is to men like him that 
Alabama is indebted for her development before the Civil War, 
and her wonderful restoration following. Before any coal mine 
was opened in the Cahaba field, Mr. Smith acquired thousands 
of acres of coal lands and endeavored to call attention to the 
importance and value of that field of coal. He attracted men of 
science, and men of wealth and enterprise. His plantation home 
was headquarters for statesmen, prospectors, geologists, and early 
iron-masters. Hunting parties for deer in the Cahaba hills made 
his home the starting point for camp hunts, and his teams, tents, 
and camp outfit supplied all requirements." 

Mrs. Frank Fitch, the daughter of Jonathan Newton Smith, 
relates that once in the late eighteen-twenties, her father and a 
boy comrade, Pleasant Fancher, were out on a camp hunt over 
to the Big Cahaba. They pitched camp near a branch emptying 
into Daileys Creek. They gathered some stones out of the bed 
of the creek to put under the logs of their big fire ; they cooked 
supper, and turned off to sleep. In the middle of the night 



74 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



Newton Smith woke up and was alarmed to find the stones they 
had picked up on fire. He woke the other boy, and, frightened 
out of their wits, both lads cleared out, and tramped home 
before cockcrow. Long years afterward Mr. Smith would tell 
his children and his grandchildren of this, the discovery of coal 
in that section. 

The stream out of which the boys gathered the rocks was later 
named Coal Branch. The precise locality is in Section 11, Town- 
ship 21, Range 5, west, and the mines of Garnsey, operated to- 
day by the Galloway Coal Company, are located here. Mr. Fitch 
recounts the story of one of Mr. Smith's old slaves, Uncle Joe 
Smith, who was trained by Jonathan Ware, and at the time of 
this writing is ninety-three years old. 

" While yet a young man, Uncle J oe was bought by Jonathan 
N". Smith at a sale of the estate of a Mr. Watson of Georgia, for 
the sum of three thousand dollars, gold value, for he was then 
an expert hammerer of iron. When the slaves were freed, Mr. 
Smith set Joe up for himself on a quarter section of land, on 
part of his large plantation. The place is still owned by the heirs 
of J. N". Smith, who, for many years, have supported Uncle Joe 
and his faithful and circumspect wife. 

"When Joe was eighteen years old he had been apprenticed 
by his first owner to Jonathan Ware for five years, and taught 
the art of hammering iron, for it was an art, and but few ac- 
quired it. The forge where Joe first worked for Mr. Ware was 
located about two miles west of Montevallo in the edge of Shelby 
County, on Shoal Creek.. It appears that a Mr. Lindsey built or 
owned the forge. It was located there because of the water power 
used for blowing the forge. That location has since the war been 
known as Thompsons Mill. As Uncle Joe says, he was eighteen 
years old when he first hammered iron there. How many years 
before that date the forge had been worked he cannot say. 

" Wisinger and Riddle had built a forge on the Little Cahaba, 
about two miles from Jonathan Ware's forge, many years before 
Jonathan Ware came to Alabama. This was about half a mile 
above the plantation residence then owned by Abington Smith, 
father of J. Newton Smith, and owned by the latter up to the time 
of his death in 1885, and since by his children. Riddle sold his 
interest to a Mr. Clayborn, and our Uncle Joe hammered iron 
there after that. It does not appear just what interest Abington 
Smith had in this forge ; but the location was on his plantation, 
and J. N. Smith afterwards sold it to one of his ex-slaves, named 
George, who used the water power to run a corn mill and gin; 
the place for many years has been known as Georges Mill." 



BIBB AND SHELBY COUNTIES, 1820-1861 75 



Professor Tuomey's designation of a "high furnace recently 
erected in Bibb County " evidently applies to Brighthope. " Its 
operations," he states, e< were confined to the manufacture of pig 
iron and hollow ware; the blast is urged by steam power, the 
boiler is heated direct from the trundle head. It is convenient 
to a good quality of ore and abundant fuel. It cannot fail of 
success." 

Mrs. Fitch recalls that a scientific man passing through that 
immediate section long ago said : " There 's enough ore right 
around here to run a hundred furnaces a hundred years/' So 
they named the spot Brighthope. The furnace was built and 
operated by William P. Browne, who was also one of the early 
owners of the Montevallo coal mines. Mr. Browne, a lawyer by 
profession, was born in Vermont in 1804. In the eighteen- 
thirties he took a contract to construct canals at New Orleans 
and Mobile, and settled permanently in Alabama. He served in 
the State legislature in 1846, and shortly after that year moved 
into Shelby County. His home was, for a time, in a log house 
at the Montevallo Mines, and it was there that his son, Cecil 
Browne, now a lawyer of Talladega, was born in the year 1855. 
William P. Browne sold his mines to George 0. Baker of Selma 
during the latter part of the Civil War, but continued to operate 
them himself under lease, until his death in 1868. He was under 
contract with the Confederate Government to furnish coal to 
the Selma works, when ' Alexander K. Shepard was associated 
with him in the management of the Brighthope furnace and 
mines. 

Eobert Thomas, known as Uncle Bobbie, was a Welshman, and 
one of the pioneer furnacemen of Georgia. " He built a puddling 
furnace on Altoona Creek in Cass County in the eighteen-thirties," 
says A. P. O'Neal. He entered Alabama with Jacob Stroup and 
Noah Goode when they put up the Cane Creek iron works, and was 
identified with iron making and furnace building in Alabama, 
mainly in Bibb and Shelby counties, from that time on. Mr. 
Thomas died in Coosa County, Alabama, in 1892. 

The ruins of Brighthope furnace may still be seen. After a 
drive of some fifteen miles through the Cahaba Hills — and 
rough going it is — one turns off the Piper and Six Mile Eoad 
into the woods near Brownes Dam. 

No house or dwelling of any sort is near and one thrusts his 
way over rocks and through underbrush man high, making for 



76 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



the river. Huge dead cedar tops, cut years ago by woodchoppers 
and let lie, entangled with wiry muscadine and briers and 
brambles bar the way. Not since 1865 when Wilson's raiders 
marched by and burned as they tramped along had human beings 
been to the spot. The banks of the Little Cahaba are high and 
precipitous. At the point where the water has a natural fall of 
some two and a half feet, the river carves through a mass of 
solid rock in which steep steps have been hewn. This is the site 
of Brownes Dam, once one of the seven wonders of Bibb County, 
and called, "the most powerful dam ever built." It was fash- 
ioned out of several tiers of great, solid hewn pine timbers, four- 
teen by fourteen, their bases resting against the seats cut in the 
rock on each side of the river, and fastened together with huge 
iron bolts. The whole made the figure of a beautiful arch, bow- 
ing up stream and meeting mid-way on a tiny little rock island 
below the shoals. It also served as a footbridge in the old days. 
It was intact until just after the war "and would have lasted 
forever," said Frank Fitch, " but some parties interested in fish- 
ing destroyed it." About one hundred and fifty yards below 
Brownes Dam are the ruins of the Brighthope furnace. They 
hide in the shadow of the bluff, and lie quiet, embraced savagely 
by the forest. There are two hollow stacks, one twenty-three feet 
in height, the other nearly nineteen, built of medium-sized sand- 
stone blocks, with arches like those of Tannehill. Cedars, wal- 
nuts, water oaks, and the sweet gum range around them. The 
sound of the river makes the place seem very far away. Traced 
directly, it would, perhaps, be not more than three hundred yards 
from the road. 

The moment one stepped across from Bibb County into Shelby, 
at this early period, he would be confronted by the sturdy and 
courageous figure of the iron-master, Horace Ware, fruit of 
whose labors exists at the present day in certain properties of 
the Alabama Consolidated Coal and Iron Company, of the Shelby 
iron works, and in the Anniston and Sheffield districts of Ala- 
bama as well as in the State of Texas. Mr. Ware died in 1890 at 
his home in Birmingham after a service of nearly sixty years 
in the iron business. He was born in 1812, at Lynn, Massa- 
chusetts, the cradle of the iron industry of North America. 
In building several of the early forges of Bibb County, he was the 
first assistant of his father, Jonathan Ware, whose history has 



BIBB AND SHELBY COUNTIES, 1820-1861 77 



already been given. At the age of sixteen he became his father's 
partner in business, and at twenty, bought him out. Horace 
Ware purchased virgin lands at Shelby in 1841, and completed 
his blast furnace in 1846. Of a reticent disposition, he was 
practical, energetic, a fine, manly spirit. " He was pioneering 
all his life," his widow said. " I remember, even in driving 
anywhere he always took the roughest places in the road be- 
cause, he used to say, nobody else would take them, and they 
must be smoothed down." Mrs. Ware, whose marriage to 
the pioneer iron-master occurred in 1863, some time after the 
death of his first wife, was Mary Harris, one of the earliest 
women writers of the State. 

In the beginning Mr. Ware had less than one thousand dollars 
working capital, and credit in those days was not so ready and 
comprehensive as now. Notwithstanding his limited means and 
the never ending embarrassments which naturally would confront 
every such pioneer enterprise in a new country, he had within 
fifteen years established an active manufacturing plant consist- 
ing of an eight-ton charcoal blast furnace, a twelve-ton merchant 
bar rolling mill, a large saw mill, grist mill, cupola and foundry, 
blacksmith and wood shop, and comfortable homes for more than 
three hundred people. Besides all this, he had established what 
he considered most important of all, a good church and school- 
house. 

In the forties and fifties — in fact up to the commencement 
of the war in 1861 — securing and controlling skilled and com- 
mon labor for furnace purposes was difficult, and frequently our 
little pioneer iron industries were idle for the lack of help. At 
Shelby, Horace Ware sought to provide against this trouble, and, 
owning a few slaves, he selected several of the most active and 
intelligent of the number and trained them in the different lines 
and departments of furnace work. " For instance, Berry was 
trained to the duties of foundry-man, Charles was skilled as a 
collier, Anderson as furnace engineer, Clark as chief coal team- 
ster, others as top fillers and keepers, and Obediah was given the 
task of making and keeping in repair the white oak baskets nec- 
essary to handle the charcoal. These were duties in lines of 
work very unusual for negroes in that day when agricultural 
labor claimed the great body of them. They proved faithful and 
efficient in these places of responsibility, and when they became 
free after the war, their knowledge of such work stood them 



78 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



well in hand, and they easily secured remunerative employment 
with furnace operators. As they were true and faithful in 
slavery, so were they loyal and respectful to their old master in 
their days of freedom, and the bond of mutual regard, the 
warmest esteem, remained to be broken at the grave, and under 
the rule of Providence it was for Mr. Ware to follow each one 
of his ex-slaves to their last resting place, and often he gave 
them help and comfort in their declining years." 1 

As heretofore stated, Horace Ware, in the eighteen-forties, 
erected a small blast furnace at a point in Shelby County, — 
Shelby iron works, which is still known by that name. 

"The old stack, constructed of brick and rough stones, was 
located at the foot of an ore hill, thus avoiding the necessity of 
a costly hoist for the stock. It was about thirty feet in height, 
with three tuyere arches, and a front arch for cinder and metal 
opening. The hearth and crucible were lined with sandstone 
blocks dressed to proper shape, and in the bosh and lining were 
used firebrick made of clay obtained in the neighborhood of the 
furnace; the hearth sandstone was quarried in the hills some 
twenty miles away. An old steamboat engine was used for blow- 
ing purposes, and this, together with two old-fashioned horizontal 
blowing cylinders and other necessary castings and equipments 
were gotten in Rome, Georgia, and rafted down the Coosa. The 
daily capacity of the furnace was from four to six tons of strictly 
first-class cold-blast pig iron, and the fuel for smelting was char- 
coal manufactured in the old time straw and dust pits from pine 
timber surrounding the plant. The pits held about thirty cords 
of wood, and after a slow burning of ten or twelve days, would 
yield about one thousand bushels of good furnace charcoal — 
much better in fact than the coal product from the brick ovens 
largely used nowadays. 

" The ore was mined with pick and shovel, being heavily de- 
posited from surface to an undeveloped depth, and the mine 
openings not more than three hundred yards from furnace top. 
One cubic yard of earth carried about one ton of mineral. The 
full ore requirement — say ten or twelve tons daily — was de- 
livered on the furnace stock bank by the service of one mule and 
cart, and old ( Mike ' was so faithful, and became so familiar 
with his work that he pulled his load and brought back his 
' empty 5 without the direction of a driver. This was a manner 
of delivery and a minimum of quantity quite in contrast to the 
long train of fifty-ton cars required to fill the yawning abyss of 
our present day furnaces. 

" On the stock yard near the furnace a foundation of dead 

1 John E. Ware of Birmingham, Alabama, son of Horace Ware. 



BIBB AND SHELBY COUNTIES, 1820-1861 79 



wood called ' bank wood ' was laid, and on this an open kiln was 
built with alternate layers of dust coal and ore, and when one 
hundred to two hundred tons were accumulated, the kiln was 
fired and left to burn slowly from bottom to top for ten or twelve 
days. This process separated the dirt from the ore, cleaned it 
of water and volatile impurities, and so far as practicable the 
ore was charged into the furnace hot from the kiln. This greatly 
improved the ore, and materially lessened the quantity of fuel 
required for smelting. The limestone flux and ore donicks were 
reduced to proper size for furnace use by being sledged through 
two-inch grate bars by hand, as against the giant jawed steam 
crushers used now. Pure freestone water, the very best for 
boilers, was conveyed by means of a line of twenty-foot pine logs 
bored through from end to end and joined, which was a crude 
makeshift in comparison with wrought and cast conveyances of 
modern practice. The ore, fuel, flux, sand, and water were all 
contiguous to the plant, and easily obtained. It was an ideal 
site for the manufacture of iron, but for its great distance from 
market and the absence of ways and means of transportation. 
This latter objection, or lack, was not considered against the lo- 
cation, as the waters of the Coosa Kiver passed by some eight 
miles to the east, and its broad bosom afforded aid in the matter 
of transportation to distant consumers. 

" For many years — in fact, until 1857-58, when the Alabama 
and Tennessee Eivers Eailroad reached Columbiana — all the pig 
metal not converted at these works into hollow ware and various 
kinds of castings and sold to farmers and merchants in Shelby, 
Talladega, and Jefferson counties, was hauled to the Coosa Eiver 
by wagon and boated down on crude rafts made for the purpose to 
Montgomery and Prattville, and by steamboat to Mobile. Far away 
markets and high freight rates to reach the same have been for- 
bidding barriers, and served to make our progress slow, and at 
times unprofitable since first we began, more than seventy years 
ago. The most perplexing question of all was how to get rid of the 
production advantageously and acquire the quick means with 
which to meet the daily cost of disposing of five or six tons of 
iron. Furnace owners in those days in the South had no bank 
account, and but very little capital. The cost of production was 



as follows: 

For ore $2.00 

For charcoal 10.00 

For limestone .75 

For labor 3.00 

For repairs, etc 1.00 



Total $16.75 



" This appears high now, but was considered very reasonable in 
1847, when the methods were crude and every appliance simple, 



80 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



and necessarily expensive. The proximity of all the raw material, 
and the pure, easily reduced, sixty-five per cent yield ore kept 
the cost within this limit. To get this sum per day was not 
an easy problem to solve, and embarrassments and hardships 
were met and contended with which are altogether unknown in 
this day and time among furnace operators, who have skilled 
men and ready means, wide credit, and anxious markets at their 
command. 

"The Shelby management coped with the conditions, dire 
though they were, and floated a portion of the product down the 
Coosa, and obtained the necessary cash. The balance was molded 
into hollow ware of many kinds, and classes, including cooking 
utensils, heating and cooking stoves, dog irons, sash weights, boil- 
ing kettles, cast plates, etc., and the same was wagoned through- 
out the adjacent country and sold and bartered to individual 
customers and merchants whenever and wherever they could be 
found, for money, if perchance it was to be had; for merchan- 
dise and country produce if more convenient. 

" In this simple fashion work progressed at Shelby for several 
years, and the iron gave such general satisfaction as to lead to the 
idea that ores so very low in phosphorus and sulphur and so high 
in metal should be manufactured at home, and utilized in wider 
fields of industry than was possible in the rough cast. So, in 
1854, under the superintendency of Robert Thomas, a skilled 
and experienced English iron worker, a small forge was put up 
on Camp Branch, three miles west of the furnace plant, and the 
Shelby pig iron was reduced to wrought blooms for further test- 
ing purposes. A small lot of this wrought product was shipped 
by Mr. Ware to Sheffield, England, in 1856, where he had it 
manufactured into steel, and then into the finest of cutlery, in- 
cluding knives, forks, razors. Alabama iron was enthusiastically 
endorsed by the steel manufacturers for high grade steel pur- 
poses. Shelby furnace and its product ranked high in quality 
and importance from its first day's cast of pig metal, and it is 
the only iron-producing locality that has remained in almost 
constant commission from the period of its founding to the 
present time. From 1846 to 1862 it was owned by Mr. Horace 
Ware; from 1862 to 1867 by a company of Alabama stock- 
holders, of which he was a member; from 1867 to about 1890 
by a company of Hartford (Connecticut) and Alabama stock- 
holders, and since then to the present by New York capitalists, 
and for the past fourteen years it has been under the personal 
supervision and control of Colonel T. G. Bush, of Birmingham. 

" An instance going to show how readily the early make of the 
Shelby furnace recommended itself to the consumer, was about 
1852 when a sample lot of pig metal was sent to foundrymen in 
Columbus, Georgia. This was tested in a competition with iron 
from Georgia and Tennessee, which was then supplying their 
market. It gave better results, and an order for one thousand 



BIBB AND SHELBY COUNTIES, 1820-1861 81 



tons was given at thirty-six dollars per ton, other iron selling 
for several dollars less. Up to that time — in fact up to 1861 — 
this was probably the largest single order booked for iron manu- 
factured in Alabama, and it required nearly one year's output 
of the furnace to fill it. 

" Prior to this date, to wit, in 1858-59, Horace Ware had built 
at his furnace at Shelby a large rolling mill with a capacity of 
twelve tons of heavy and small-size finished bar iron. This was 
the first and parent rolling mill plant for Alabama. The enter- 
prise was entered into by Mr. Ware in 1858, before the war 
was really anticipated, and in 1859 he completed the plant, and 
in December of that year made the first heat in his puddling 
furnaces. On April 4, 1860, the mill engine was started and all 
the machinery properly adjusted, and on the 11th of April, 1860, 
this mill turned out Alabama's first day's product of finished bar 
iron, the beginning of an era in her history as an iron manu- 
facturing State." 



6 



CHAPTER VII 

PIONEER IRON MAKING IN NORTHEASTERN ALABAMA, 1830- 
1861, AND FIRST STATE GEOLOGICAL SURVEY 

Nine iron works in Talladega County. Judge Miller's reminiscences. Maria 
forge and foundry established by Dr. Moore. Early record of some of 
Alabama Consolidated Coal and Iron Company properties. Purchase of 
Maria by Riddle Brothers. Minute description of plant by Walter D. 
Riddle. Erection of Rob Roy and Eagle forges. Blast furnace on Choc- 
olocco Creek. Operations in Calhoun County. History of Cane Creek 
iron works. Judge Randolph's account of early iron making. Getting 
over Waxahatchee Shoals. J. H. Weatherly's recollections. First trag- 
edy of the mines of Alabama. Record of Hale and Murdock furnace in 
Lamar County. Biographies of Abraham Murdock and of Harrison 
Hale. Association with early industrial history of Mississippi. Sum 
total of antebellum operations. Main service as forerunner of future 
development. Pig iron prices from 1849 to 1861. Appointment of 
first State geologist. University of Alabama supplies funds. Biography 
of Michael Tuomey. Association with other States. Results of first re- 
port. " Alabama may possibly have another industrial future besides 
growing cotton." 

OF the picturesque country northeast of Bibb and Shelby, 
the three counties of Talladega, Calhoun, and Chero- 
kee mainly concern these chronicles. There were in 
Talladega County nine iron works all told — eight forges and one 
blast furnace — in operation during antebellum days. Of these, 
the Maria forge, erected in 1836, was the first and Eagle forge 
(1846), the second. Then followed in successive order: Cheaha 

Creek foundry ( 1846) , Robert Jemison and Hunter ; Riddles 

Mill foundry (1848), Edward Spang and Dr. William Summers; 
Fain's Creek forge, Silas and David Garrigus, A. W. Bowie, 
Major Walker Reynolds, John T. Ragan; Clairmont Springs 

forge (1850), Amerine; Rob Roy forge (1852), George M. 

Riddle, John Moore, Curry and Parks ; Chinnebee 

forge (1852), Silas Garrigus; the Knight furnace (1854), J. L. 
Orr and William Craig Orr. 

According to Judge G. K. Miller of Talladega, whose recol- 
lections extend back to the eighteen-forties, nearly all of these 
early forges were situated on Talladega Creek and the iron gen- 
erally in use throughout that section of the country was the 



IRON MAKING IN NORTHEASTERN ALABAMA 83 



product of these forges. The iron was distinguished for qualities 
of strength and softness and was especially adapted for the mak- 
ing of plow-points and the tips of horseshoes. The ore worked 
in these forges was in large measure obtained from the deposits 
of brown hematite six miles east of Talladega, near the present 
day Ironaton furnaces operated by the Alabama Consolidated 
Coal and Iron Company. The chief market towns of the old days 
were Wetumpka, Alabama, and Augusta, Georgia. 

Concerning the establishment of the Maria forge, Professor 
Tuomey notes its beginning by J. M. Moore, Esq., in 1836. 
According to Mr. J. L. Stockdale, Dr. John Moore, a practicing 
physician in early days in Talladega, conceived the idea of build- 
ing a foundry, or plant for recasting scraps, or pieces of old 
and useless iron into something of value. 

" Dr. Moore was the pioneer in this section, and he began by . 
gathering up a lot of old iron, such as broken grates, kettles, and 
other domestic vessels, old plows, horseshoes, and everything he 
could find of that nature as a basis for his new foundry. The 
early files of The Talladega Reporter, which was established 
in 1843, will show the prices of iron being therein quoted at 
from six to ten dollars per hundred pounds. He selected a site 
for his plant on Talladega Creek, and secured the land in Section 
17, Township 19, Range 6 East, Coosa Land district. 

" He got the dam about half completed when he sold his plant 
to Walter D. Riddle, who bought it with the intention of con- 
necting with it a i forge.' Mr. Riddle's two brothers, Samuel and 
John, united with him under the name of Riddle Brothers for 
the purpose of building a forge and for the manufacturing of 
iron from the ore beds, lying in the adjoining country.' 

" They then leased from Stephen Atkins the mineral rights of 
iron ore in the N" W/± of Section 33, Township 18, Range 6 East, 
where Washer No. 7 and the storehouse of the Alabama Con- 
solidated Coal and Iron Company now stand. 

" They built and equipped the plant for a forge, or furnace, — 
I think they had three, — and manufactured iron from ore in 
1843, as the files of the old Reporter will show. This plant was 
then called Maria forge, and worked from fifty to one hundred 
hands. The blacksmiths declared the iron they made to be su- 
perior to anything heretofore used in point of ductility and dura- 
bility. One thing I can say from personal experience — it was the 
most durable iron in horseshoes that I have before or since ever 
used. The excellence of this iron was partly due to the ore used, 
the brown hematite, the fineness of the charcoal, and the skill of 
the workmen employed; but mainly to the length of time during 
the hammering process." 



84 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



The Riddle brothers were railroad contractors and civil en- 
gineers, originally from Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania, where 
they had been engaged in early railroad construction. On their 
venture South they were accompanied by two iron makers, Silas 
and David Garrigus, descendants of colonial iron workers, and 
by George D. Wheeler, a civil engineer. 

A minute description of Maria forge as operated by the Riddles 
has been written for this work by Walter D. Riddle, a nephew 
of the pioneer iron maker. 

" Maria forge was located on the banks of Talladega Creek, and 
was operated by water power obtained from that stream. The 
dam was ten feet high; the water wheel that run the forge 
hammer was eight feet in diameter, with eight feet face 
for the paddles or buckets, as they were called in an overshot 
wheel, spaced about two feet apart. The flanges or end of the 
wheel were solid, made of planks pinned together with wooden 
pins. This was called a breast-wheel. The shaft was about 
twenty inches in diameter and octagon shaped. The water struck 
the wheel up about three feet from the bottom. The water 
opening was about six inches at the start (that is from the paddle) 
and came to a close at the bottom of the wheel, and was made 
with the same circle as the wheel. The shaft was about twenty- 
five feet long. On the end of the shaft there was a cast iron 
ring called the horns. There were eight horns, or lifters, that 
lifted the hammer. These horns were shod with hard wood — 
maple or hickory. The hammer handle was parallel with the 
shaft, so that when the horns came around they would lift the 
hammer. The handle of the hammer was about twelve feet 
long and twelve inches square, made of black gum, and above 
the hammer there was a strong spring, called the 6 rabbit/ This 
would force the hammer down when thrown up, thereby causing 
a quicker stroke. The hammer struck this spring or ' rabbit ' as 
hard as it did the anvil, therefore it took great resisting power to 
hold the ' rabbit ' in place. To secure this, the ' rabbit ' and ham- 
mer handle were fastened between two posts which were held 
steady by four beams as long as they could be hewn, and keyed 
together, and long enough to reach across the building, acting as 
a lever to hold the posts solid. The hammer was of cast iron, 
weighing about five hundred pounds. Its face was three by twelve 
inches and when in full operation made about eighty strokes per 
minute. 

" The bellows were two cylinders about four feet in diameter, 
the pistons being driven from the bottom by a beam with an axle 
between the cylinders, called a walking beam. This beam was 
worked by a water wheel like the hammer wheel, though smaller, 
getting the motion with a crank. 

" The ore was crushed by four stamps, then called e stampers/ 



IRON MAKING IN NORTHEASTERN ALABAMA 85 



operated by a still smaller wheel. These stompers were about 
ten feet high, made of wood six inches by six inches, working be- 
tween wooden guides, and were lifted by wooden cogs on a wooden 
shaft. On this shaft was a wooden pulley driven by one on the 
shaft of the water wheel. The stamps or stompers were shod 
with iron. The ore was fed into the mortar by a boy, and a con- 
stant stream of water ran into the mortar, thus keeping it from 
choking. The mortar in which the ore was crushed had iron 
bars set edgewise in the bottom, about one half inch apart. As 
the ore was crushed sufficiently fine the water and ore passed 
between the bars. A box below the mortar caught the ore, letting 
the mud pass off with the water, and leaving the ore washed, ready 
for use. 

" From this box the crushed ore was carried in a wheel- 
barrow to the fireplace or furnace, thrown on the fire and melted 
down. The fireplace was about four feet square, built of slate 
rock obtained from the hills near by, no fire brick or fire clay 
entering into its construction. In the bottom there was a place 
rounded out and about two feet deep to receive the melted iron. 
In front of this was an iron plate with holes in it, to let out the 
slag. The operators would open the top hole first, then the next, 
and so on until they drew off the slag down to the iron and then 
cooled down the fire. After the melted iron had cooled enough 
to hold together and form a mass they rounded it up with long 
bars, rolled it out on the floor and hammered it round with hand 
hammers. This round mass was then caught with a pair of 
large hooks, made something like tongs, then carried with a crane 
to the hammer, and it was hammered down to about six inches 
square and about three feet long. This was called ( shingling a 
loop.' When taken from the fire it was called a ' loop/ After 
the ' shingling' process, the mass of iron thus hammered was 
again heated and cut into pieces of the proper size for any bar 
that was desired to be made. 

" After cutting the pieces were handled with tongs. If a 
wagon tire was to be drawn the operator had a strip of iron with 
a notch to gauge the width and thickness, and the hammer man 
drew about a foot of the bar by his gauge, the rest of it by his 
eye and it would be perfectly correct. As they were heating this 
bar in the fire to be drawn out other ore was thrown on the fire 
to make the next f loop.' At Maria forge they made a grade of 
iron equal to the best Swedes iron, and all this grade of iron 
there made was stamped with a boar's head, the Riddle family 
crest. 

" The capacity of Maria forge was about a ton of iron every 
twenty-four hours, the price in its early operation being about 
eight cents per pound. In operating the furnace the first blast 
was made by having a box with bottom open and lowered into 
still water, with a square column of water forced into the box. 
The water came straight down through the air about two feet. 



86 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



The opening in top of box was the same size as water column. 
There was a space in the box above the still water, and the air 
going in with the water was condensed and so forced through a 
pipe leading to the top of the box and into the fireplace. After 
this the cyclinders heretofore described were used for getting the 
blast. These cyclinders, called bellows, forced the air into a 
receiver four feet square. The top and bottom of the receiver 
were of wood, the sides of leather. Weights were placed on top 
to give the air regular pressure. A cast iron pipe ran from the 
receiver to the fireplace or furnace and through and back just 
over the fire, thus heating the air forced through the pipes, and 
when expelled giving what was then called a hot blast. Maria 
forge had four fireplaces. Most of the pipes used in its operation 
were made by boring a hole through logs of wood, as iron piping 
was scarce and difficult to get in that day, and in that locality, as 
it was fully sixty miles to Wetumpka, the nearest shipping point. 
A few pieces of inch pipe, about four feet long and hand made, 
were used. I have one of these pipes in my possession now. 
When one of these early forges was in operation the strokes of 
the hammer could be heard at a distance of three miles. S. S. 
Riddle, George D. Wheeler, and Davis Garragus were the first 
people to successfully make iron in this county, the Eagle 
being started by parties that learned how to make iron while 
working with my father, who was the principal among the Rid- 
dle brothers in operating the iron works. Maria turned out 
more iron than all the others combined. The Eagle was soon 
washed away and G. M. Riddle and John Moore failed and sold 
to Mr. Curry. Trains of wagons were kept busy by my father, 
hauling iron to Wetumpka and Montgomery and also supplied 
the local demand. In 1851 or 1852 a man named Spang came 
here from Pennsylvania and started a foundry at Riddle's Mill 
(now Waldo), one-half mile from Maria forge, and made pots, 
skillets, stoves, plows, and other castings. 

" The logs to make the lumber used in erecting the Eagle 
were hauled on a truck wagon, the wheels of which were discs 
sawed from a large black gum log. I wonder what the machinist 
of to-day would think of running an iron furnace or forge, with- 
out one foot of iron shafting, without a single iron pulley, or a 
pound of Babbitt metal, with all of the journals being run on 
wooden bearings." 

The Eagle forge was located three miles from Maria forge. 
It was built by George D. Wheeler and Israel Sprayberry. 
Rob Roy forge was also situated on Talladega Creek, either in 
Section 35 or 36, Township 19, Range 6, and some two or three 
miles southeast of Eagle forge. It was erected by George M. 
Riddle and John Moore. George M. Riddle was a brother-in-law 
of S. S. Riddle. Neither the Eagle nor Rob Roy was as large as 



IRON MAKING IN NORTHEASTERN ALABAMA 87 



the Maria. Rob Roy had only two fireplaces, but had a saw and 
grist mill in connection with the forge. 

During the Civil War Major Walker Reynolds and David 
Garragus took some of the material left from Maria forge and 
started to build a forge on Fains Creek. Major Reynolds sold 
his interest to John T. Ragan, who had worked many years with 
the Riddle brothers. This forge was operated for some little 
time after the close of the Civil War. 

Professor Tuomey's description of the pioneer operations in 
Talladega is as follows: 

"In these forges there are four stamps of 50 pounds each. 
There are two furnaces at each forge, and in the ordinary 
years the Talladega Creek will drive the blast for nine months. 
It requires fourteen to fifteen hands to attend to a forge. The 
working force is divided thus: 

One (sometimes two) hammerman. 

Two firemen Working at forge. 

One hand to stamp and roast ore. 
Four hands to chop wood. 
Three teamsters. 
Two colliers. 

"The cost of putting up such works, exclusive of dwelling 
houses, roads, etc., is from $2,500 to $3,000. The charge of the 
furnace is usually 5 pounds of ore to 1 pound of iron. The char- 
coal used is 700 bushels to the ton (of 2,000 pounds.) of bar 
iron. The weight of the loop of iron produced varies from 100 
to 135 pounds, and is made in three hours, so that four loops *are 
the result of a full day's work. A loop of 125 pounds yielded 100 
pounds of bar iron. This is worth $5.50 per 100 pounds, at the 
works. The pound of iron ought not to cost the manufacturers 
more than three cents. 

a All the ore is now obtained from the Chinebee bed, at Seay's, 
25 cents being paid for the privilege of hauling a load of 3,500 
pounds of ore. For raising the ore and piling it at the bank, 25 
cents are given, while the hauling amounts to one dollar per 
1,000' pounds. The Chinebee bed has now been worked thirteen 
or fourteen years. 

" Small, irregular pieces of iron are formed during the work- 
ing of the loop, which are found troublesome. On being 
dissolved in sulphuric acid, they give a considerable amount of 
phosphorus and quartz, chemically combined. It is probable, 
therefore, that these are portions of the iron, rendered hard by 
such impurities." 

The cost of 3,000 pounds of ore delivered to Riddles' bloomery, 
a distance of six miles, was $4.50. "To-day," writes Judge Miller, 



88 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



"tangled vines, the lizard, and slimy moccasin creep over the 
crumbling remains of all of these monuments of Alabama's early 
industrial life." 

The two following advertisements appeared in The Alabama 
Reporter of Talladega, June 12, 1845: 

Buy at Home. 

The Subscriber begs leave to inform the citizens of Talladega 
and the surrounding counties that he has purchased the IRON" 
WORKS lately owned by JNO. M. MOORE, situated on Talla- 
dega Creek, six miles from Talladega and half a mile below 
LONG'S MILLS, on the Socapatoy Road, and will keep con- 
stantly on hand a general assortment of IRON, which he will 
sell at less than Wetumpka prices viz : 6*4 cts. and warrant to be 
equal to any in the United States. Mill Irons, &c. made to 
shortest notice. 

He will also keep a constant supply of assorted Iron at the 
Store of Messrs. T. W. HUEY & CO., Talladega, and at the store 
of Messrs. CURRY & GROCE, Kelley's Springs. Orders ad- 
dressed to the subscriber, at Talladega, or to T. W. Huey & 
Co., will be promptly attend [ed] to. 

W. D. RIDDLE, 

GIN MAKING 

AND 

REPAIRING. 

The subscriber wishes to inform the citizens of Talladega 
and the adjoining counties that he has commenced the above 
business in the town of Talladega. 

ALSO 

Making Wrappers and Flues, for cleaning Cotton. 

ALSO 

Wheat Thrashers, 
suited to Water or Horse power. 

Those Machines will be made on plans most in use in England 
and Scotland, which are different in some respects from any made 
in this country, and will thrash much faster. 

N. B. — I would say to those who wish to have work done in 
this line of business that they would call at my Shop on Main 
street, next door to Coe's Black Smith shop. 

JOHN W. MARTIN. 

Talladega, May 1st, 1845. 

Concerning the old blast furnace on Choccolocco Creek, Judge 
Miller says : 



IRON MAKING IN NORTHEASTERN ALABAMA 89 



" In the early eighteen-fif ties James L. and William Craig Orr, 
brothers and highly skilled mechanics, acquired a tract of land 
in sections 11, 12, 13, and 14, Township 17, Range 6, East, in 
Talladega County, and some two miles from the present town of 
Munford. Through this tract of land Choccolocco Creek, from 
three to five chains wide, wended its tortuous way over rocky 
shoals. A dam was erected on this creek by the Orr brothers, 
harnessing an exceptionally fine water power, which was utilized 
by them in driving the machinery for a large factory for the 
manufacture of cotton gins. This manufactory did a large and 
lucrative business, and cotton gins from its product supplied 
a large portion of North Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, and 
Tennessee, being transported to these markets by wagon, as no 
railroad had then been built in Talladega County. About 
1854 Samuel Hunter was taken into the firm and the business 
was conducted in the name of Orr & Hunter. In 1860 William 
Craig Orr died. His interest in the cotton gin factory was sold 
to the surviving partners, and the manufacture of gins continued 
until after the breaking out of the War of Secession in 1861. 
Cotton planting in the South then ceased, and the Orr & Hunter 
manufacturing plant ceased to operate. . . . 

" In 1863, and after the fall of New Orleans, two bachelor 
brothers of large wealth, J acob B. and Benjamin Knight, ref ugeed 
from Louisiana, bringing with them a large number of slaves. 
They came to Talladega County and, on March 11, 1863, for a 
consideration of $20,000, Orr & Hunter conveyed to Jacob B. 
Knight the more than eight hundred acres of land and all the 
tenements and appurtenances of their manufacturing plant. The 
Knight brothers at once converted the plant into a cotton factory 
for the spinning of yarn, and also erected a blast furnace, having 
a capacity of about four tons of pig iron per day, the power to 
operate which, together with the cotton factory, being supplied 
by the waters of the Choccolocco. A foundry was also put in 
operation, where pots, kettles, and many other castings were 
made. All the different branches of this manufacturing plant 
were kept in full and successful operation by the Knight brothers 
until April, 1865, when General Croxton's brigade, of Federal 
General Wilson's raiders, applied the torch to everything com- 
bustible, and wrought such utter destruction of the entire plant 
that only a few chimneys and a portion of the furnace stack 
marked the spot that had been the hive of these several industries 
for so many years. Upon the close of hostilities between the sec- 
tions in 1865 the Knight brothers returned to Louisiana, the site 
of their plant passed into other hands, and only a part of their 
furnace stack remains, a silent and unrelieved sentinel, standing 
guard over the grounds where once stood the homes of many 
of Talladega's industrial workers. A few miles away, at the home 
of N. B. Linder, there is a large wash pot, which, after constant 
service for forty years, is still doing full duty, and bearing witness 



90 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



to the excellent quality of hollow ware turned out from Knight 
Brothers' foundry." 

The second furnace erected in Talladega County was known 
first as Salt Creek iron works, then as Alabama furnace, and was 
later called Jenifer. It was constructed during the Civil War. 

There is a tradition to the effect that a tribe of Indians called 
the Ullabees, corrupted by the whites into Hillabees, occupied 
the mountainous district along Talladega Creek, extending into 
the present county of Clay, and that these Ullabees had iron 
arrow heads, and various rude implements made of iron when 
the first settlers penetrated the wilds and traded with the Ulla- 
bee clan of the Muscogee Indians. Although this is prob- 
ably no more than tradition, it is interesting and has its place in 
Alabama folklore. 

According to Judge Miller the territory east of the Coosa River 
and north of Coosa, Chambers, and Tallapoosa counties was not 
acquired from the Indians until the treaty made with them in 
1832, and but few white settlers had gone into this territory 
until 1833, and even during that year these few were threatened 
with an Indian war, and some hurriedly left. This territory, 
including Benton (now Calhoun), part of Cherokee, Cleburne, 
Clay, Randolph, and Talladega counties, was occupied by the 
Creek and Cherokee Indians until the autumn of 1836, when 
they were forced by the State guard or militia, assisted by United 
States troops and marshals, into corrals or camps, and late in 
that year removed — most of them — to Indian Territory. 

Among the many early settlers of Talladega who achieved 
prominence in Alabama history was a close relative of John Pier- 
pont Morgan, Lewis E. Parsons, who served in 1865 as pro- 
visional governor of the State. ' Mr. Parsons, who was a grandson 
of Jonathan Edwards, was a native of New York State. He came 
South in 1840 and practiced law in Talladega. For more than 
forty years he was a citizen of Alabama and owned mineral 
lands here, but he never became identified with the iron making 
ventures of the South. 

Iron making in Calhoun County was commenced a few yearg 
after Maria forge of Talladega went into operation. 1 Only one 

1 Data received from George B. Randolph of Anniston, Alabama, Jacob 
Stroup of Hot Springs, Arkansas, W. P. Lay of Gadsden, Alabama, John 
E. Ware, J. H. Weatherly of Birmingham, Alabama, and Thomas M. 
Owen, Director of Department of Archives and History. 



IRON MAKING IN NORTHEASTERN ALABAMA 91 



plant existed here in the antebellum period, but that one is 
known by five names: Cane Creek iron works, Benton iron 
works, Moore and Goode furnace, Crowe's iron works, and the 
Old Polkville furnace. 

The fact that it was this plant that furnished a portion of the 
iron used on the Merrimac in the Civil War, gives it a special 
distinction. Its establishment by Jacob Stroup, the builder 
of the first iron works of the Carolinas and of Georgia, and by 
Noah P. Goode in the early eighteen-forties has been chronicled 
in the chapter on Tuskaloosa. Mr. Stroup furnished the capital 
and worked with Goode in the construction and original opera- 
tion of the plant. He sold out in 1842 and returned to Haber- 
sham County, Georgia. Dr. John M. Moore of Talladega, later 
went into partnership with Goode, furnishing the capital and 
the slave labor. 

The Moore and Goode furnace was, according to Judge Ran- 
dolph, located in the northwest quarter of Section 14, Township 
15, south of Range 6, East, on Cane Creek, about six or seven 
from where the stream flows into the Coosa River. It was op- 
erated by water power and had at the start a limited capacity — 
not more than two or three tons. 

"Much of the iron was converted into wrought iron by being 
beaten and drawn out by immense trip hammers operated by the 
water power," writes Judge Randolph. "Also much of it was 
made into wagon tires, molded into plow shares, pots, skillets, 
kettles, dog irons, and shovels, and during the Civil War they 
made large kettles used in the salt works in Clarke County, 
Alabama. Some of it was made into castings and shipped to 
the different Southern States, Georgia, South Carolina, and some 
went as far as the State of Texas. 

" The iron was made into blooms, which were heated to a 
high state and drawn out between a large anvil and the trip ham- 
mers into wrought iron and put in the proper shape. In fact, 
this system was the forerunner of our present day rolling mill, 
evolutionized, as the old spinning wheel and loom to our modern 
looms. 

" This old furnace stood on the creek at the south end of Chalyb- 
eate mountain and just below a fall in the creek from which was 
obtained the power. The trip hammers were operated by cogs 
attached to the water wheel shaft, and in making its revolution 
these cogs would trip the hammer and let it fall on the hot iron, 
which was being held by large iron tongs in the hands of the 
expert roller, who would continue to draw it out until brought 
to its desired shape. They must have been ponderous hammers, 



92 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



as I have been told by old settlers that their pounding could be 
heard a distance of four or five miles of a still morning. 

" The ore, limestone for fluxing, and sand and charcoal were 
found right at hand near the furnace. The iron seems to have 
been paid for by the pound, for its ' drawing/ hauling, and selling 
was all by the pound. 

"0. M. Alexander of Anniston has in his possession the old 
furnace book. The first item as shown by these books is as 
follows: 6 1843— August 12: Thos. Carter, for making 230 
pounds of iron. His total to August 31 was 3,562 pounds.' 

"An entry on August 30, 1843, shows that Sam (negro) had 
made a total of 2,408 pounds. This was kept up daily, showing 
the furnace was continuously working. 

" Beginning in the year 1845 are many items showing 
amounts, and to whom paid, for hauling pig iron and blooms to 
the creek and the river. This was Tallassahatchee Creek and 
the Coosa River. The yard where the boats were built was lo- 
cated on Tallassahatchee Creek, just below the mouth of Ohatchie 
Creek, and much of the product was loaded in the boats, and at 
proper tide of water was floated into the river and carried to 
Wetumpka, Montgomery, Selma, and Mobile. 

" During the month of March, 1847, are items showing i 38,080 
pounds hauled to river, 4,480 off for McGhee, 33,600 sent to 
Alfred A. Janney.' 

" Mr. J anney is still living in Montgomery, Alabama, and as 
he was furnishing iron in the construction of the State capitol, 
being built at that time, therefore Calhoun County has the 
distinction of furnishing the iron in the first capitol built in 
Montgomery. In the month of June, 1848, during our war with 
Mexico, are items showing blooms run out and sent to Mobile. 

"The boating down the Coosa was extra hazardous, floating 
over the fall and rocks, going through the Weduska shoals, pass- 
ing through the narrows and darting down the 4 devil's staircase ' 
and other rapids of the lower Coosa. The crew from the Coosa 
would deliver the boats at Wetumpka and foot it back to their 
homes. W. N. Coker, a citizen of Calhoun County, who was 
born and raised near the old furnace, says that when a boy he 
has seen these old boatmen footing it home from Wetumpka, 
where they had left their boat, making the distance, 90 miles, 
in two days, afoot. This was tall sprinting, but Mr. Coker is 
here to vouch for it. Many of the men who did this hauling, as 
shown by the old books, have left descendants who have become 
men of prominence in the professions and business of our 
country. Among those paid for hauling pig iron and blooms 
to the river and creek as far back as 1846 are P. Brothers, L. 
Coker, William C. Ritchie, the Englands, R. Ingram, I. Meharg, 
Louis Meharg, Lewis Downing, G. B. Douthit, and many others. 

"The mouth of Tallassahatchee Creek is 136 miles north of 
Wetumpka, and from here the flatboats loaded with iron from 



IRON MAKING IN NORTHEASTERN ALABAMA 93 



the Moore and Goode furnace were loaded for shipment below. 
There are more or less of those shoals composed of sandstone 
and chert until we arrive at Weduska Shoals, forty-seven miles 
above Wetumpka, where the river strikes the metamorphic forma- 
tion composed of granite, semi-granite, schists, and gneiss from 
that point on to Wetumpka. 

" Right here at Weduska Shoals was where the old boatman's 
trouble set in. These shoals are in the shape of a fan handle. 
They are over 3,000 feet wide at the widest part, and terminate 
at the handle of the fan to 390 feet. The shoals contain many 
large rocks and islands. The water is swift and strikes those 
obstacles with great force, throwing up spray and white caps 
with a great roar. It forms great eddies and whirlpools. 
Through this the old boatman would be taken in a waltz, and on 
through the narrows, after which the river widens out to about 
2,400 feet, forming the great Waxahatchee Shoals. The shoals 
have reefs extending from bank to bank, being from one foot to 
three feet high, and on down through the ' Devil's Race,' shooting 
the chutes, over Butting Ram Shoals with its barren rocks, from 
three to four hundred feet high, steering clear of the immense 
whirlpools and ' suck,' and on to the dangerous Tuck-a-league 
Shoals and other dangerous rapids until he finally reaches his 
destination — Wetumpka. 

" The post-office afterwards established at the old furnace 
was named Polkville, in honor of President James K. Polk. The 
old Democrats made a cannon to celebrate Polk's election, and 
grew so enthusiastic in firing the old gun that it burst. This 
old cannon was taken to Talladega and set up at the old Isbell 
corner. 

" The furnace continued to run under different owners until 
destroyed by General Lovell H. Rousseau, of the Union army, 
July 14, 1864. Among the owners were Moore and Goode, 
Morris, Hicks and Loyd, Shepard and Moses, and lastly Daniel 
Crow. 

"After the beginning of the Civil War the product of this 
furnace was largely consumed by the Confederate Government, 
some being sent to Selma and Rome, Georgia, where it was 
made into cannon and other munitions of war. Some was used 
in the construction of gunboats." 

Speaking of the primitive mode of operation of this furnace, 
Captain Lay says : 

" One of the peculiarities was the crude and unusual method 
of blowing the furnace. The blowing engine, or more properly 
the apparatus which supplied a blast to the crucible, was nothing 
more than a wooden box about twelve feet square and twenty 
feet high. The box was placed upright under a fall and the 
creek poured through an opening at the top. The outlet at the 



94 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



bottom was so arranged and regulated that a certain amount of 
water remained in the bottom. The moving water created a 
current and a pressure of air which could not escape except 
through an opening which piped it to the furnace. This method 
was long in use, but later a practical blowing outfit was in- 
stalled by the Morris family." 

" Cane Creek got its name from the vast fields of cane brake 
formerly growing along its course. It leaps out of the blue hills, 
and just after flashing by the Weather ly plantation, it turns off 
quite suddenly, ' just like it got mad over something/ said Squire 
Weatherly, ' and runs away around/ Within the favored 
ground where it circles in a wide detour, making an odd-shaped 
loop, the old iron works were built. On this pleasant, green 
peninsula, twenty-five acres in all, there were grouped, besides 
the iron works, all the houses and little farms, owners' homes, 
workers' houses, and quarters for fifty slaves. It was the 
centre of business activity for that whole region for near twenty 
years. ' Oh, it was lively then ! ' exclaimed Squire Weatherly. 
6 My father, James A. Weatherly, settled on Cane Creek in 1836, 
about twelve miles west of where Anniston now is. I was born 
in that year. My father owned a small farm and saw mill that 
stood not one hundred yards from the furnace. I remember 
when it was built. It was not merely a furnace for the purpose 
of making pig iron, for connected with it was a foundry, at 
which every description of machinery was manufactured and all 
kinds of hollow ware. A large amount of the pig iron was 
used in the manufacture of wrought iron which was puddled 
and drawn out under huge hammers. The old forge hammer 
weighed six hundred pounds and we could hear it boom, boom, 
for miles beyond Cane Creek. I remember we had a man of 
almost giant stature who, they said, once lifted that big hammer 
off its anvil. 9 

"With the coming of these iron works came the usual com- 
missary store, a post-office, and biweekly horse mail, a general 
merchandise store, a doctor and his shop, a blacksmith shop, a 
wagon shop, and a small machine shop. As all the heavy com- 
mon labor was supplied by Mr. Moore, only a few farmers, 
skilled mechanics, carpenters, machinists, foundrymen, etc., 
were needed. But these added ten or twelve white families. 
The ore (brown) was hauled about two miles, and all the pine 
and some oak for miles was cut away for charcoal. This timber 
has been replaced by a real forest of large oaks. The sound and 
bustle around this village quickened the pulse of the country folk 
for miles around. 

"All the machinery, furnace, forge hammer, machine shop, 
grist and saw mill, was run by water. The dam was built half 
a mile northeast of the furnace, and from that point the creek 
made a big loop and came back, north, within a few steps of the 
cast-shed. The wood works were burned in Rousseau's raid, but 



IRON MAKING IN NORTHEASTERN ALABAMA 95 



the beautiful creek, with its peninsula, is there yet, a lovely situ- 
ation, and so is the fine bed of ore. But the life of those pros- 
perous days has given way to the ravages of time, and dead 
silence has taken the place of human industry." 

This old ore property is owned to-day by the Morris Mining 
Company and by the Birmingham firm of Shook and Fletcher. 

An advertisement referring to the old company appeared in 
The Alabama Reporter of June 12, 1845, as follows: 

Iron Castings &o. 

The undersigned have on hand a large supply of first rate 
Iron, and will shortly be supplied with every description of 
Castings and Hollow wares, at their Iron manufactory on Cane 
Creek in Benton County, all which they will warrant to be 
of the very best quality, and will sell them cheaper than they 
can be procured any where else north of Mobile. They will keep 
supplies at the various towns and villages in the surrounding 
country — all farmers and blacksmiths who need supplies will 
find it greatly to their interest to buy of 

NOAH GOODE, & CO. 

N. B. They will shortly be prepared to fill orders for Castings 
— address the firm at Alexandria, Benton County, Alabama. 

N. G. & Co. 

The public are respectfully informed, that a supply of Iron 
from the above mentioned Iron-Works, is kept constantly on 
hand by 

CUNNINGHAM & DIXON. 
December 20, 1843. 

William P. Chilton has disposed of his interest in the above 
firm, and has withdrawn by consent. The business is carried 
on by Noah Goode & John M. Moore. 

Tuomey observed in 1849 that the ore used by these iron works 
had been used for years in the bloomeries of the Little Cahaba. 
The daily output of this furnace is stated in his report to have 
been six thousand pounds of iron; two thousand pounds of 
which was put into hollow ware and machinery castings, two 
thousand pounds into bar iron, and two thousand pounds into 
pigs. Six hundred bushels of charcoal was used every twenty- 
four hours. Stone coal beds thirteen miles oft 2 were also worked. 
They were then starting a rolling mill and looking to turn out 
all kinds of machinery and fine castings for cotton mills. " An 



96 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



extension of the works, introduction of the hot blast, and 
various other improvements are contemplated, which, when ac- 
complished, will place this among the most complete establish- 
ments in the South/' 

E. G. Morris, when a boy, constructed some of the machinery 
of this plant. Its site now belongs to his sons, who are operating 
a foundry at Morrisville, near Anniston. 

Judge Randolph relates an incident of these times : 

" Slaves were worked in mining ore for the furnace, and each 
one had set tasks to perform. One Saturday one of those negro 
miners, by the name of Vann, applied for a pass, running from 
that day noon until the following Monday morning, to visit his 
wife, who was a slave, belonging to Captain Floyd Bush, living 
some six miles distant. Monday morning Vann did not report 
for duty. A messenger was sent over to Captain Bush's. As 
Vann was a faithful servant it was thought he might have been 
taken sick. The messenger was told that no one had seen Vann. 
It was then naturally suspected that the negro had run away. 
Runners were started out in every direction, but nothing could 
be heard of the old slave. In a few days another man was sent 
to the mine worked by Vann. It seemed that the old slave had 
bored a tunnel under the hill to get the ore to save the stripping 
of the over burden, and a cave-in had taken place, thus burying 
him alive. The tunnel was filled with loose earth and rock fallen 
from the roof, and it was many days before the body of poor old 
Vann was found." 

At that time, death in a mine in Alabama was an utterly 
unlooked-for fate. This tragedy of the old slave made a pro- 
found impression all over the country. How many hundreds 
since this early time, both white and black, have been brought 
up out of the mine's pitiless jaws, crushed in harness, God alone 
counts! If the mineral wealth of Alabama has proven to be 
the glory of our State, it has also been the source of countless 
tragedies. 

Operations in Cherokee County will be approached during the 
war period. Records of its one important antebellum plant, that of 
Round Mountain, have already been detailed. On the northern 
edge of Lauderdale County a group of mills and furnace and 
foundry were put up in 1850, by Samuel Vanlier. The iron was 
hauled by wagon to Florence and shipped by river to various 
points. 

Concerning operations in northwest Alabama in the county of 
Lamar, "Walter Nesmith of Vernon, Alabama, writes : 



IRON MAKING IN NORTHEASTERN ALABAMA 97 



"I find that in 1857 there was a forge established about one 
and one-half miles from what is known as the Hale and Mur- 
dock furnace. The ore was hauled by wagon, and there made 
into iron. In 1859 the furnace was built about two and a half 
miles west of Vernon by the Hale and Murdock Iron Company, 
and continued in business from the time it was inaugurated until 
about 1868, when it went into bankruptcy. From the time it went 
into operation pig iron and all kinds of vessels, plows, and horse- 
shoes were made there. These products were hauled to Columbus, 
Mississippi, a distance of about twenty-four miles. The ore from 
the Hale and Murdock Furnace hill, as it is still called, is known 
as the brown hematite. Its quality, although experts differ as to its 
quantity, seems to rate among the best in the State. The plows 
which were manufactured at this old furnace are said to have 
been much better than those we get now. This concern worked 
about one hundred and fifty hands, day and night, from the 
time it was established to the time it went into bankruptcy, and 
it consumed only a very small part of the hill and is said to have 
done a very prosperous business." Items received from Mr. Hale's 
sons, M. A. Hale and Dayton Hale of Atlanta, Georgia, are here 
given: "Harrison Hale and Abraham Murdock, under the 
firm name of Hale and Murdock of Columbus, Mississippi, began 
making blooms and plow molds in 1858 in Fayette, afterwards 
Sanford, now Lamar County, Alabama. The forge was located 
on Wilsons Creek, a short distance from the ore beds and from 
the site of the furnace afterwards built. An old-fashioned 
undershot wheel was used for developing the power to operate 
a trip hammer. The iron was hauled to Columbus, Mississippi, 
and sold to farmers and planters. Its superior quality made it 
eagerly sought for and it was sold at the high price of imported 
Swedes iron. The furnace was run for four years after the 
war closed, but the long distance from the railroad, and the neces- 
sity for hauling with wagons all the supplies used and all the 
iron made caused large losses. And because of the losses and 
the competition with other more favorably located, the enter- 
prise was abandoned. There has never been another furnace built 
on the site and the ore beds have never been worked since." 

Both Hale and Murdock were New England men, it seems, 
and like Daniel Pratt, stout advocates for diversified industries 
in the South. They were engaged not only in iron making, 
but also in railroad operations, in the cotton business, and in 
mercantile business. They were the first men to build and 
operate cotton mills in the State of Mississippi. 

Abraham Murdock was the son of the scholar and theologian, 
James Murdock of Connecticut. Concerning him Mr. Nesmith 
writes : 

7 



98 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



"Mr. Murdock was a graduate of Yale, and besides being 
a man, far-seeing and practical, he had rare scholarly attainments 
and was a speaker of fluency, effectiveness, and classical diction. 
He took great interest in public affairs and represented Lowndes 
County, of which Columbus is the county seat, in the legislature. 
He removed from Columbus, Mississippi, to Mobile, and was for 
some time president of the Mobile and Ohio Railroad, succeeding 
Judge Milton Brown in that office. Mr. Murdock died shortly 
after the war in' Mexico, where he was engaged in opening up 
silver mines." 

M. A. Hale of Atlanta contributes the following biographical 
sketch of his father : 

"Harrison Hale was born in Winchendon, Massachusetts, in 
1807. He was a descendant of Thomas Hale, an emigrant from 
England, one of the early settlers of Newburyport, Massachusetts. 
Harrison Hale came South in 1835 and formed a partnership 
with Abraham Murdock in merchandising and manufacturing. 
This partnership continued for thirty years. The firm had 
factories, mills, and tanneries located at Bankston, Wesson, 
and at Columbus. During the war they manufactured hats, 
brogan shoes, and saddles and blankets for the Confederate 
army, as well as shot and shell. Although opposed to secession 
and exempt by reason of his occupation, Harrison Hale volun- 
teered and served as captain of a Mississippi company raised in 
1864/' 

Mr. Hale was a relative of United States Senator Hale. 

Having now surveyed the operations of the pioneer workmen 
in the counties of Franklin, Jefferson, Blount, Walker, Tuska- 
loosa, Bibb, Shelby, Talladega, Calhoun, Cherokee, Lauderdale, 
and Lamar, the sum total of iron works existing before 1861 
is found to have been twenty-seven. Of these there were nine 
primitive furnace plants, seventeen forges, and one rolling mill. 
In Jefferson County, which is to-day the center of activity of the 
mineral region, there was neither forge, furnace, nor foundry of 
any description. Up to the year 1862 only a few far-scattered 
blacksmith shops existed here. A smithy is frequently desig- 
nated as "iron works" by local chroniclers. Many of the so- 
called early forges were in reality not much more than large- 
sized blacksmith shops. The solitary little log smithy of Old 
Jonesboro is spoken of in Miss Duffee's Chronicles, prior to the 
war, as " the leading iron working establishment of J ones Val- 
ley." In this narrative discrimination has been made as far as 



IRON MAKING IN NORTHEASTERN ALABAMA 99 



possible. The smithy is always the first step; it is always an 
auxiliary, and, therefore, has its own place and degree of im- 
portance in a history of iron making. 

Concerning the early iron works of Alabama in general, John 
E. Ware writes as follows : 



" So far as we know, all of these forges worked brown hematite 
ores, used charcoal as a fuel, and water for blast power, and while 
they earned good money for the sturdy owners, and quite plenti- 
fully supplied our early settlers and farmers with good, strong 
iron for their horseshoes, wagon tires, and plow molds, it appears 
now that the widest and most lasting good accomplished by them 
— their real, substantial mission, in fact — was to serve as a 
forerunner in a vast spread of wholly undeveloped mineral re- 
sources, calling public attention to outcroppings here and there, 
and giving to the consumer an opening idea as to what ores we 
had, and make known to the world the fact that they could be 
easily and cheaply reduced to the highest form of steel in every 
line of manufacture. And in what better form and condition — 
more pleasing, more convincing as to quality and as to utility — 
could this great undeveloped mineral resource of ours have been 
indexed and presented, than in the rugged shape of the beautifully 
blue-tinted bloom of the old style Catalan forge product, showing 
its strength and malleability against all competition, and ready 
at once to be hammered out into every useful shape by the wait- 
ing blacksmith ? " 

It has been said that the burdening of these old-time blast 
furnaces was based somewhat on Mark Twain's recipe for Johnny- 
cake : " A lot of ore, a lot of fuel, and about a quarter of a lot 
of flux." 

A statement of pig iron prices from 1849 to 1861, in the 
handwriting of Horace Ware, is as follows: 



Date 
1849 
1850 
1851 
1852 
1853 
1854 
1855 
1856 
1857 
1858 
1859 
1860 
1861 



Price 

$30.00 
30.00 
30.00 
30.00 
30.00 
38.00 
36.00 
36.00 
34.00 
32.00 
30.00 
30.00 
30.00 



To whom sold 

Gindrat & Co., Montgomery. 

Jany & Co., 

Gindrat & Co., 

a tt 

Daniel Pratt, Washington (Alabama). 



Selma. 



Campbell & Co., Selma. 

" " 2000 lb. at Columbiana depot 
Boating $6.00 per 2000 lb. to Montgomery, Washington and Prattville 
6.72 " 2240 " hauling men $1.00 to $1.50 



100 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



An event of great import in State history, as well as in these 
chronicles, was the appointment in the year 1848, of the first 
State geologist, Michael Tuomey. The following joint resolu- 
tion passed by the General Assembly of Alabama is recorded: 

" Whereas, Michael Tuomey, professor of mineralogy, geology, 
and agricultural chemistry in the University of Alabama, is re- 
quired by an ordinance of the Board of Trustees of the Uni- 
versity to devote a portion of his time and labor to making 
geological explorations, and examining into the natural re- 
sources of the State; and, 

" Whereas, it would be both interesting and useful to the Gen- 
eral Assembly, and to the people, to examine the reports which 
he may make from time to time; 

" Therefore, be it resolved by the Senate and the House of 
Representatives of Alabama in General Assembly convened, that 
Michael Tuomey, professor of geology, etc., in the University 
of Alabama, be and he is hereby appointed State geologist. 

" Be it further enacted, that said State geologist be, and is 
hereby required to lay before the General Assembly of the State, 
at its biennial sessions, and as often as from time to time may be 
thought expedient, a full report of his geological surveys and 
explorations and his examination into the mineral and other 
natural resources of the State. 

J ohn W. Winston", Speaker of the House 

of Representatives. 
L. P. Walker, President of the Senate. 

Approved January 4, 1848. R. Chapman, Governor." 

As may be observed, no mention of appropriation or any re- 
muneration whatsoever, for the geologist's services or ex- 
penses in office, or in the field, is made. None was accorded by 
the State for the ensuing six years. All funds were supplied by 
the self-sacrificing zeal and the lean pocketbook of the University 
of Alabama, whose officers alone appreciated the magnitude, the 
necessity, and the value of such a work to the country. This 
service has never yet received due recognition from the State, 
for the University of Alabama was thus godmother to the first 
efforts to explore scientifically the mineral region of Alabama. 
Out of its own treasury came the cash and out of its own heart 
the flame of encouragement to the early toilers. The State has 
reaped the benefits and a curtain has long been dropped over 
the action of the University and the work of Professor Tuomey. 

Michael Tuomey was born on St. Michael's Day, 1805, in the 
city of Cork, Ireland. As a child he spent the greater portion of 



IRON MAKING IN NORTHEASTERN ALABAMA 101 



his time at his grandmother's home in the country. Although he 
attended school in Cork for a short time, it was chiefly at home 
under direction of his mother and grandmother that he studied. 
Outdoors formed the main part of his curriculum. His mother 
had a singularly vivid and sensitive perception of the wood life 
and the beauties of the hills, while his grandmother was a pro- 
found student of botany. It seems that from these two gentle- 
women the boy got his first hunger of the wilds and the feeding. 
His father, Thomas Tuomey, was a man of considerable mechan- 
ical skill. At seventeen, however, the boy was thrown on his 
own resources with only his rather curious and unique training 
for a stepping stone. 

He took the first opening — a school in Yorkshire, England, 
where he taught for a space. Here track is lost of him for sev- 
eral years, the only thing being known that in the late eighteen- 
twenties he took passage for America. He located in Phila- 
delphia and, always hankering for country life, managed to get 
into farming. But the Pennsylvania farming experiment did 
not pay, it seemed, and Michael Tuomey became a wanderer. 
He made, his way to the eastern shore of Virginia, on foot chiefly, 
and he must have seen hard times. He took up a country school 
down there, and later became private tutor in the family of 
John H. Dennis, Esq., of Maryland. Here, in 1837, he met Miss 
Sarah E. Handy, whom he married several years later. Before his 
marriage he went up to Troy, New York, entered the Van 
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and was graduated from that 
school. Soon afterward he was appointed engineer in charge of 
the construction of a railroad in North Carolina. Luck did not 
seem to be with him, however, for the works shut down and he took 
to teaching school again, this time at a seminary in Loudon 
County, Virginia. About a year and a half later, with the as- 
sistance of his wife, he established a school of his own in Peters- 
burg, Virginia. 

He was gradually coming to his own. His school became 
headquarters for scientific men and scholars, and Professor 
Tuomey had there the largest and best collections in geology, 
mineralogy and paleontology in the State of Virginia. He car- 
ried on an active correspondence with the foremost geologists 
and scientists in this country and abroad, among them being 
Professor Bache, superintendent of the Coast Survey, Dana of 
Yale, Dr. Gibbs of Charleston, and the great Agassiz of Harvard. 



102 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



On each of Sir Charles LyelPs visits to America he was Tuomey's 
guest in Petersburg. 

Professor Tuomey made mineral discoveries of considerable 
value to Virginia, and being recommended to Governor Hammond 
of South Carolina by his scientific friend, Edmund Ruffin, 
Tuomey was appointed State geologist of South Carolina in 
the year 1844. In addition to two official reports on the geology 
of South Carolina, Tuomey completed, with Professor Holmes 
of Charleston, a work on the fossils of that State. Three years 
after taking up the work there, he received the appointment to 
the University of Alabama. By 1847, on account of the state- 
ments made by such scientists as Sir Charles Lyell and 
because of the floating reports of the untold mineral wealth 
of Alabama, this particular State must have had a peculiar in- 
terest to such an investigator and active workman as Tuomey. 
Certain it is that he came here keen. He no sooner began his 
professorship than he also entered upon a systematic examination 
of the geology of Alabama. 

Not until 1854 was any appropriation for the geological work 
granted by the Alabama legislature. When the appropriation 
was made Professor Tuomey resigned from the University that he 
might give his time untrammeled to the State, lecturing only at 
intervals. He pushed out in all directions. The first general 
survey of Alabama was made at record-breaking speed. In two 
years' time the funds were exhausted and the geologist again 
took up his professorship at the University, carrying on at the 
same time the herculean task of preparing his exhaustive reports 
and finishing up the clerical end of the work. His observations, 
maps, records, and discoveries were in later years found to be 
so precise, exact, and accurate, so nearly perfect, in fact, that 
they are considered marvelous and the man himself has been 
called a genius by his fellows. Doubtless the secret of his speed 
and accuracy was his thorough, natural equipment. Such an ob- 
server as Michael Tuomey has seldom been known, and his mem- 
ory was extraordinary. His reports are still consulted, even after 
the long lapse of the years. Alabama is not the only Southern 
State, however, with a debt of gratitude to Professor Tuomey, for 
Virginia and South Carolina are debtors likewise. He died in 
harness on the 30th of March, 1857, in his fifty-second year, his 
work just half complete. To the worth of his finished work 
those now in the field can testify. Down in Tuskaloosa to-day, 



IRON MAKING IN NORTHEASTERN ALABAMA 103 



in what is known as the New Cemetery, there is the burial place 
of that good workman. A white marble cross, simply inscribed, 
stands at the grave's head. 

" I can see Tuomey now/' John T. Milner wrote in 1886, "as 
hammer in hand, he travels over onr rongh mountains, along 
onr rugged streams, his soul full of the future of Alabama ! 
His reports are the first guide books of the mineral regions of 
our State. Simple, earnest old man! Fate hurried him pre- 
maturely away only a few short years before the veil was lifted 
from the hidden treasures he alone knew lay buried in the bosom 
of his adopted State.'' 1 

Steps for mining coal and iron on a somewhat more systematic 
and extensive scale were taken up in several of the counties 
immediately after Tuomers report. Southern capitalists were 
induced for the first time to invest their funds in coal and iron 
companies. Tuomers report set the Governor and the legislature 
to thinking that Alabama had possibly another industrial future 
besides growing cotton. 

1 Address to the Georgia Society. 



CHAPTER VIII 



EARLY RAILROAD ENTERPRISES 

Beginning of the South and North Railroad. Conditions in Alabama. 
Total railroad mileage of State in 1852, one hundred and sixty-five 
miles. Causes for lack of enterprise. " Macadamized roads less liable to 
accidents." Advent of Frank Gilmer. Conception of railroad across 
Red Mountain. Assistance rendered by Governor Moore. Sketch of 
Luke Pryor. Colonel Sloss' early years. Appropriation granted for 
reconnaissance. Appointment of John T. Milner as chief engineer. 
Young Milner' s thirty-mile ride. Interesting points of his career. The 
great chance of his life. First view of Jones Valley. Synopsis of Mil- 
ner's report. How the legislature received it. " The mineral region is so 
poor even a buzzard would starve to death." George S. Houston lends 
helping hand. "I was a gone up man," says Milner. The sensation 
of the day. 

AN act of far-reaching influence upon the mineral region, 
and coming several years after the appointment of the 
State geologist, was the granting of the charter for the 
Alabama Central Railroad, or, as it was later termed, " The Old 
South and North," now a part of the Louisville and Nashville 
Railroad system. The act, passed by the legislature February 17, 
1854, is accounted the most notable event of Governor Winston's 
administration. The fact of the matter is, however, that the 
business was put through, not by aid of Winston, but rather in 
spite of him. Samuel G. Jones, Charles Pollard, Frank Gilmer, 
George S. Houston, J. W. Lapsley, Luke Pryor, James W. Sloss, 
and a few men of their kidney were fighting for the cause of 
railroads in Alabama. 

The northern and southern portions of the State, without a rail- 
road, were two separate and distinct countries. Political, social, 
industrial, and economic conditions had become gradually 
tangled into a Gordian knot. The one solution now plainly be- 
fore the people was a railroad ; veritably, at that time, a feat Alex- 
andrian. Various spasmodic efforts to get a railroad started 
through the mineral region had been made, since 1836 : barbecues 
had been held, memorials adopted, orations pronounced. The 
while the knot became more tangled. 



EARLY RAILROAD ENTERPRISES 105 



In the year 1852 the total railroad mileage of Alabama was 
one hundred and sixty-five miles. Memphis and Charleston 
had forty-four miles ; Montgomery and West Point eighty-eight ; 
Mobile and Ohio thirty-three. There were other railroads, it is 
true, but as yet on paper. They were "running hither and 
thither," remarks De Bows, " delighting the imagination with 
their laudable intentions and liberal extent ! " Tuomey's report, 
however, aroused general interest in railroad construction. He 
succeeded, at length, in impressing the legislature with his own 
belief that the mountain countries abounded in mineral wealth. 

Three railroads that would partially penetrate this region were 
actually under way : the Selma, Rome, and Dalton, now a portion 
of the Southern system; the Northeast and Southwest, later the 
Alabama and Chattanooga, now part of the Alabama Great 
Southern, and the Alabama Central for which charter was now 
granted. The increase in total mileage from one hundred and 
sixty-five miles in 1852 to eight hundred miles in 1860, is indica- 
tive of the enthusiasm for railroads born in this decade. Were 
the facts relative to the railroad history of Alabama of this 
period presented in detail it would require several volumes. The 
indifference on the part of the public and the State itself was 
practically suicidal. Up to the outbreak of the Civil War, in- 
deed, the railroad system here was barely opened, while in other 
southern States it was far advanced in comparison. Alabama's 
railroads were small detached lines supported by individual sub- 
scriptions. They were consequently always trembling on the 
verge of collapse and utter extinction. In the year 1840 the 
people of Alabama voted for macadamized roads instead of rail- 
roads, " as being less liable to accidents. 99 De Bows says in his 
Commercial Review of the South, " God may have given you coal 
and iron sufficient to work the spindles and navies of the world, 
but they will sleep in your everlasting hills until the trumpet of 
Gabriel shall sound unless you can do something better than build 
turnpikes." The members of the Internal Improvement Com- 
mission of 1840 reported to the legislature that not even a mac- 
adamized road could be built, " sandstone not being suitable 
thereto and limerock is not to be had ! 93 1 Indeed, one might 
gather from Garrett, De Bows, and Milner one perfect incident 
after another. But the main concern of this history is the old 
South and North Railroad. No sooner was its charter granted 



1 William Garrett. 



106 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



than it was pigeonholed. This little difficulty did not, however, 
discourage Frank Gilmer, or the other railroad promoters. 
Colonel Gilmer was then by profession a cotton man, with 
headquarters at Montgomery. He was, in fact, one of the 
biggest planters and merchants of the Black Belt. But he knew 
that there was a hill country, for he had come into Alabama 
through it when he was a youngster and he had never forgotten 
it. He had come down from Tennessee on horseback at the very 
time David Hubbard was putting through the Decatur and Tus- 
cumbia Railroad, which was also the year that James R. Powell 
and Josiah Morris entered the State. Although reared in Ken- 
tucky and Tennessee, Gilmer was a Georgia boy, born in Ogle- 
thorpe County in 1812. He was barely twenty-one years old 
when he set out for Montgomery to make his fortunes. When 
he came near to the big hill by Elyton in Jefferson County 
his attention was drawn to the curious stones sometimes crushed 
by his horse's hoofs. They were dark red, and there was that 
same red dust noticeable for some distance. The heavy wheels 
of the stage coaches, the shoes of the coach horses, farm wagons, 
and the sheep and cattle droves had powdered down the stony 
surface of the Montevallo road into a strange monotone of red. 
Frank Gilmer loaded his pockets and saddle bags with the curious 
" rocks." Some one in Montgomery told him that every rock he 
had in his pocket was solid iron ore and that he had come over a 
mountain of iron, named Red Mountain. 

To Frank Gilmer the news seemed miraculous. He put his 
stones of mystery away and said no more. First he had his 
living to make. He began where he had left off in Tennessee, 
at teaching school. He saved enough, at length, to make a crude 
start in the mercantile business, and within ten years was on the 
road to financial success, and by 1850, accounted a rich man. 
But he never forgot Red Mountain ; he never forgot that horse- 
back ride through a country man-high in iron ore. " The dream 
of his life became a railroad from Montgomery to Nashville 
through the mineral regions of the State. There were other 
dreamers, it is true, on this subject, after the publication of 
Professor Tuomey's geological report in 1849. But theirs were 
night dreams and passed away as the sun arose. Not so with 
Frank Gilmer. The thought never left him. It followed him 
to his counting room, it followed him to his bed, it followed him 
in his church, it followed him everywhere. His thoughts became 



EARLY RAILROAD ENTERPRISES 107 



words, and his words became acts, and the result was the South 
and North Railroad. . . . Frank Gilmer deserves the gratitude of 
every man, every woman, every citizen, and every taxpayer of Ala- 
bama. He inaugurated and built the South and North Railroad. 
He had lieutenants, it is true, or rather corporals, so to speak, for 
none of us ranked higher in comparison to him than corporal 
to general. He was in the material and financial world what 
Andrew Jackson was as a warrior, a man of the same mold and 
stamp." 1 

It can thus be readily seen that the mere act of pigeonholing 
the charter for his railroad could not snuff out Frank Gilmer's 
purpose. With the incoming of Andrew D. Moore as governor 
of Alabama there came hope of fishing out that charter and 
perhaps of getting State aid. Governor Moore was one of the 
few contemporaries of Michael Tuomey who realized the signifi- 
cance of the words "mineral wealth." Governor Moore had 
been a teacher and lawyer, a member of the State legislature, and 
judge of the circuit court. A bill providing for the construction 
of the Nashville and Decatur Railroad, which had been vetoed by 
Governor Winston, had been carried over Winston's head by 
Luke Pryor. James W. Sloss was president of this North Ala- 
bama road, which was eventually merged into the Louisville and 
Nashville system. Its history has as many windings as Gil- 
mer's road. Its clan of fighting men joined forces with Frank 
Gilmer and Major Belser. The Mountain Contracting Company 
was organized to start construction work between Decatur and 
Calera. 

Luke Pryor led affairs in his district. Judge Robert Brickell 
had been Poor's first law partner. Now James W. Sloss was 
his side partner in railroad and commercial ventures. As 
noted in chapter two, Pryor's father and Sloss's father, after 
serving in the War of 1812, both settled in north Alabama, one 
in Madison County, and the other in Limestone. Luke Pryor 
was sent to the State legislature from Limestone early in the 
eighteen-fifties, along with Major T. H. Hobbs, to get a charter 
for the Nashville and Decatur Railroad. Years later, when the 
term of George S. Houston was closed by death, after his fine 
record of public service, Luke Pryor was appointed as his " only 
legitimate successor" in the United States senate. 

1 John T. Milner: Address before the Georgia Society, 1889, loaned by 
J. W. DuBose. 



108 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



As for James Withers Sloss, or " Colonel 99 Sloss as he is 
always called, he was born on his father's farm in Limestone 
County, the year after Alabama was admitted to the Union. 
His first job was keeping books for a butcher near Florence, 
and he began it when he was no more than fifteen years old. 
He had to foot it a good many miles every day over rough roads 
to and from the shop, for seven successive years. He read 
and studied in between times as well as he could. He was gifted 
with application and a quick, bright sense. He came to like 
Shakespeare, and being true Irish, he liked Charles Lever and 
used to quote " Harry Lorrequer " and " Charles O'Malley 99 
to the end of his days. One characteristic of Colonel Sloss 
was that he always knew his own mind. In his sixteenth 
year he decided to marry a girl he liked right well, Miss 
Mary Biggar, and on his twenty-second birthday, the marriage 
took place. The young man bought a small country store out 
of his seven years' savings and started shop in Athens, Ala- 
bama. He had a good eye to business, " though he was not 
much on a risk," and invested only where he knew for a fact the 
ground under foot was solid. He made few mistakes in his land 
speculations and business deals, and by the late eigh teen-fifties 
he was called colonel, and had not only extended his mercantile 
interests throughout the entire northern section of the State, but 
he owned several fair-sized plantations, had a voice in county 
and State politics, and was taking up the fight for railroads 
with vigor, and that good Irish tongue of his to boot. 

An appropriation for a reconnaissance for a railroad route 
through the mineral region was at length gained through the 
concerted and strenuous action of the group of railroad men 
interested. 

The act on record reads as follows : 

" And whereas, the legislature of Alabama did, on the fourth 
day of February, 1850, designate and select for the connection 
of the navigable waters of the bay of Mobile with the Tennessee 
River, the Alabama and Tennessee Rivers Railroad and the Ten- 
nessee and Coosa Railroad, and did appropriate for the purposes 
of carrying out said act of congress, all of one half of the said 
two per cent fund on hand and accruing up to that date, and to 
the extent of said appropriation took the same in stock of said 
company. . . . 

" Section 6. And be it further enacted, that nothing contained 
in this act shall be so construed as in any wise to interfere with 



EARLY RAILROAD ENTERPRISES 109 



any existing appropriation made by this, or any subsequent legis- 
lature, from the said two per cent fund accruing or coming into 
the treasury after the first day of December, 1857. 

" Section 7. Be it further enacted, that the sum of $10,000 
be, and the same is hereby appropriated, out of the three per 
cent fund now in the treasury, to be expended and applied, under 
the direction of the governor, in making a reconnaissance for a 
route for a railroad from the Tennessee River to some point on 
the Alabama and Tennessee Rivers Railroad, and to make a sur- 
vey of the most practicable route to connect the Tennessee River 
with the navigable waters of the Mobile Bay, with reference to 
the development of the mineral region of the State, which said 
reconnaissance and survey must be made in the year 1858, report 
thereof to be made to the governor, which report shall contain 
a full statement of the length of the route, grades, cost per mile, 
together with all the particulars that are usually observed in sur- 
veys of this description. Approved, February 8, 1858." 

As will be seen by this act the State had already been com- 
mitted to another route. It had appropriated hundreds of 
thousands of dollars of the two and three per cent fund to the 
construction of the line from Selma to the Tennessee River via 
Gadsden, as complying with the laws of the United States, mak- 
ing the donation. The survey proposed under the seventh sec- 
tion of the act above quoted was a menace to the State's former 
committal, and war was at once declared on the new departure 
by one half of the political strength of the State. However, 
there were ten thousand dollars in hand for reconnaissance work 
and preliminary survey, and the next step was to find the man. 

A young engineer, by the name of John Turner Milner was 
recommended to Governor Moore. Mr. Milner had not then 
been in the State more than a few years, and was scarcely known 
outside of railroad circles. He was engaged on a survey some 
twenty-five or thirty miles below Montgomery, when word of his 
appointment reached him. The thing was news to him, and his 
son, Henry Willis Milner, says, "He had pulled no wires to get 
it. In those days folk did not know anything about pulling 
wires and they would 've scorned to do it, if they did know ! " 
The man back of the appointment was probably Samuel G. 
Jones. 

Minus coat, collar, and clad simply in his rough working rig, 
young Milner did not stop for so much as a shave, but he leaped 
on his mare and gave her the rein. Into Montgomery town 
she galloped — the thirty-mile ride — and straight up Dexter 



110 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



Avenue to the front door of the capitol. Engineer Milner, plas- 
tered with mud, his leggings split, and his trousers torn, marched 
in to see the governor of Alabama. Moore stood up and put 
his hand on young Milner' s shoulder. " Is this the man I have 
appointed chief engineer of our great State railroad ? " he 
queried, and he looked him up and he looked him down. " Well," 
— the governor paused and there was a twinkle in his eye, — " it 
looks to me, Mr. Milner, as if the first thing we'd better do is 
get you some new breeches," he said. 1 

Young Milner, like Frank Gilmer, was a Georgian, born and 
bred. His father Willis T. Milner, Sr., was one of the frontier 
settlers of Pike County, and was engaged in various interests, — 
farming, saw-milling, mining, — and latterly he became a railroad 
contractor in both Georgia and Alabama. A Captain John 
Milner of the Continental Army was an ancestor, and the family 
of Scotch and English stock had settled in Virginia in the 
eighteenth century. John T., born September 29, 1826, at Mil- 
ner Place, Pike County, was the oldest son. His first tutor was 
a New England teacher, his second, a French emigre of Charles- 
ton. The Milner family moved to Lumpkin County in 1837 
where Willis Milner engaged in gold mining on a small scale. 

John T. Milner had a little negro of his own named Steve, 
who followed him about like a shadow. They worked together 
and played together and in the holidays they started gold mining 
together. It was on the Pigeon Roost gold vein where John T. 
Milner and Steve got their first lessons in mining. They rolled 
wheelbarrows at the drift during the summers of four years. 
There was one particular section of ground near the mouth of 
Pigeon Creek, which looked fairly promising. "If John T. 
should ever strike gold there," his father said, "he can go to 
college." The boy then set to work to strike gold. With Steve and 
three other of the Milner slaves he worked for two months or 
more, digging through a ninety-foot alluvial deposit, and at 
length laid bare " the pay streak." 

The very next morning John T. rode down to Dahlonega, got 
two new suits of clothes, and made arrangements to enter college. 
He made a specialty of law and engineering. Conscientious, 
plodding, savagely ambitious, he found his application at length 
over-riding his strength, and his health gave way, just before his 
senior year. George Hazlehurst, the engineer in charge of the 

1 Henry W. Milner of Birmingham, Alabama, son of John T. Milner. 



EARLY RAILROAD ENTERPRISES 111 



Macon and Western Railroad, under the presidency of General 
Daniel Griffin, got Milner off into the woods and started him 
at the first rung of the ladder. Milner progressed through the 
various grades, becoming axman, rodman, topographer, level- 
man, transit man, and locating engineer. There was scarcely a 
boy in the South at that period with any technical training to 
speak of, and Milner's three years at college grind went a long 
way to boosting him up, when it came to the practical end. 
Within two years he was appointed assistant engineer of the old 
Muscogee Railroad, now a part of the Columbus and Macon 
Railroad. Then came the call to a far-off place! Lights of 
adventure beckoned to him and he followed. He joined the cele- 
brated Georgia Company, one of the pioneer cross-the-continent 
groups of the great stream of 1849, and started for California. 
He became the city surveyor of San J ose, — but the events of his 
several years' life in California make up a book in itself. It 
is enough here to say that Milner returned to Georgia early in 
the eighteen-fifties, pretty well worn out. His father had by 
this time moved into Alabama, where he had taken a contract 
for grading on the Montgomery and West Point Railroad, the 
railroad chartered immediately after the Decatur and Tuska- 
loosa. 

Young Milner joined him and shortly became first assistant 
engineer of the Alabama and Florida Railroad Company, and 
had charge of the location of that and various other lines. From 
that time, 1855, right on to 1858, he was engaged in engineer- 
ing work throughout east Alabama, where the first pronounced 
railroad activity of the State made itself felt. The two or three 
big railroad men then in Alabama came to regard him with 
marked interest. When he got the appointment of chief en- 
gineer of the much-talked-of road, through the mineral region, 
his first great chance in life had come. 

On March 27, 1858, precisely four years after the South and 
North Railroad had been chartered, the company was organized 
and reconnaissance work was begun. Milner started then to 
do that which unlocked the greatest mineral wealth contained 
in any connected area in the world. As chief engineer he was 
ordered to make the survey and report the cost of the projected 
road, the character of the country to be traversed, the value 
of the minerals to be reached, and give general recommenda- 
tions concerning the public policy of the enterprise and the 
capacity of the country to support a railroad. 



112 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



Milner collected his corps and entered upon his duties. 
" His estimates of the quantities of coal and iron that would 
eventually pass over the road," writes Baylis Grace, in the 
Jefferson County Record, "were prophetic and more than real- 
ized." Twenty-seven years later, Milner himself said : " When 
I look back and see the magnitude of the interests placed in 
•my hands, I often wonder at the accidents that carried me 
through. I had no commissioners or advisers to aid me or 
advise me in this great work. The matter of connecting the 
two sections of the State, and at the same time developing the 
mineral regions in the best possible way, was left in my hands 
alone. The legislature of Alabama was not then aware of 
the results depending on my actions, as time has clearly shown, 
or they never would have left this matter in the hands of any 
one man. The governor of Alabama gave me the law without 
any instructions. He could give none. The mineral regions 
were then an unknown quantity. Michael Tuomey was dead. 
He alone had any just conception where they were, or what they 
were. If ever a man was surrounded by a sea of difficulties, 
endless, boundless, I was that man. There was no chart, and 
no compass, but there was a never-ending show of blue lights all 
over Alabama saying, Come here, or Go there." Milner received 
advice and encouragement from Honorable John D. Phelan, 
and from his father's friend and associate, Samuel G. Jones. 

As the section of the Selma, Rome, and Dalton Railroad (now 
the Southern) between Selma and Montevallo was then com- 
pleted, Milner adopted Selma as the terminus. He visited 
the Montevallo mines, then in operation, under the direction 
of Mr. Browne, builder of the Brighthope furnace. "It was 
a very little vein," says Milner, " just about two feet thick, and 
I was gravely told that this was the mineral region of Alabama." 

The brown ore deposits near the Shelby iron works, to which 
Horace Ware called his attention, did not impress the engineer 
any more than did Montevallo. Mr. Ware was eager to induce 
the railroad management to divert its railroad from the crossing 
at Calera and pass through Shelby. To justify extra cost of 
construction he promised additional permanent freight revenue. 
Unfortunately for both the railroad and the Shelby Iron Com- 
pany the proposition was rejected. Not until M. H. Smith's 
regime, in the eighteen-nineties, was old Shelby placed on one 
of the mineral branches and ranked as a shipping point. Milner 



Down in the Brown Ore Country, Rickey Mine 
Tuskaloosa County 




Tip-top of Red Mountain, the Great Ore Range of the South 
Jefferson County 



EARLY RAILROAD ENTERPRISES 113 



selected Decatur, at the upper end of the Mussel Shoals, as the 
northern terminus of the great State road, and a point near 
Montevallo as its southern terminus. The route for the railroad 
was projected across the mountains, north and south, via Blount 
Springs and Graces Gap, just as it runs to-day. 

The village of Elyton, in Jefferson County, was considered 
by Engineer Milner " the center of knowledge on the subject of 
mineral wealth." He says : 

" I rode along the top* of Red Mountain, and looked over that 
beautiful valley where the city of Birmingham lies to-day. It 
was one vast garden as far as the eye could reach, northeast and 
southwest. It was on the first day of June, in the year 1858. 
Jones Valley was well cultivated then. I had before traveled 
all over the United States. I had seen the great and rich valleys 
of the Pacific Coast, but nowhere had I seen an agricultural 
people so perfectly provided for, and so completely happy. They 
raised everything they required to eat, and sold thousands of 
bushels of wheat. Their settlements were around these beautiful, 
clear running streams found gushing out everywhere in this 
valley. Cotton was raised here also, but on account of the diffi- 
culty of transportation, only in small quantities. It was, on 
the whole, a quiet easy-going, well farmed, well framed, and well 
regulated civilization." 1 

A contemporary 2 of J ohn T. Milner says : " Milner was a right 
slow talker, as I remember him, but a good deal of a thinker. He 
was plain and simple in his habits and tastes, honest, reserved, 
and direct. As to looks ? Well, like Stephen A. Douglas, he was 
cut off short, you know. I don't think he was more than five and 
a half feet tall. He had a great bulging forehead and deep set 
eyes. And, as I say, he was a good deal of a thinker." 

That he was a good deal of a thinker is proved to-day by his 
writings which show him to have been a worker, too. His re- 
port, to Governor Moore on the Alabama Central Railroad, 
published in Montgomery, 1859, is one of the most valuable 
documents in existence relating to Alabama. But one copy is 
extant. 3 

1 Milner's Address to the Georgia Society, 1889. 

8 St. Kevin St. Michael Cunningham of Mobile, Alabama. 

3 Opening with a tribute to Michael Tuomey whose geological map and 
opinions he adopted " as the groundwork of the operations for developing 
the mineral region of the State," Milner then discusses the various routes 
he surveyed across the mountains, and gives an estimate of the cost of 
construction and equipment of each. He inserts tables showing the maxi- 

8 



114 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



A few excerpts are as follows : 

"The Central Railroad occupies the most important position 
for the people of Alabama of any enterprise that ever came 
before them. They have thought and talked over the connection 
of South and North Alabama, and the development of their 
mineral wealth for forty years or more, but until the recent 
survey was made, it has always been considered impracti- 
cable to build a railroad through these mountains at a reasonable 
cost. For the first two months I had nothing to encourage me; 
but becoming better acquainted with the topography of the coun- 
try, one difficulty was avoided here, and another there, until 
I have succeeded in obtaining a line for the Central Railroad 
that will compare favorably in costs, grades, alignment, and every- 
thing else, with the railroads in the neighboring States, and far 
better than any other route across the Alleghany Range, except 
perhaps, the Georgia State Road. ... 

" I will not stop here to discuss the importance of developing 
our coal and iron interests to the State. They are questions of 
political economy, belonging more properly to the legislator. We 
have only to read the oft-repeated assertions of the greatest 
and wisest men that ever lived, that these two minerals underlie 
and are the real cause of the untold wealth of Great Britain, and 
to note the great and unrivaled increase in the demand for both 
these minerals all over this civilized world, to form an idea of 
the place they occupy among the products of the earth. 

" The statistics of the coal trade for thirty-two years show re- 
markable increase in the amount and value of the production 
of coal. At the present time, the value of coal annually mined 
in this country is nearly equal to the yearly production of gold 
in California. And at the present rate of increase, the coal 
crops will soon be of greater value. It appears that in 1820, 
the first year in which coal was mined in Pennsylvania, the 
amount of production was but three hundred and sixty-five 
tons, all told. 

"Alabama is to the Gulf what Pennsylvania is to the At- 
lantic States. The amount needed for ten years to come, in all 
quarters, from our mines, is only conjectural. It is not too much 

mum grades of the principal railroads crossing the Alleghany Mountains. 
He enters into minute detail of the sources of revenue for the great State 
road: coal, iron, and agricultural products. He compiles a table show- 
ing the price of coal at different points accessible by Alabama coal, and 
cost of Alabama coal delivered at these specified points. Lieutenant 
Maury's eloquent description of the future importance of the Gulf of 
Mexico and the Panama Canal, and Major Chase's report on "the impor- 
tance of coal in the Gulf from a military point of view," are quoted in full, 
together with many pages of statistics relating to the early mineral develop- 
ment of Pennsylvania and other States. A discussion of canals and water- 
way improvements is entered upon, and the importance of railroad 
construction in Alabama dwelt on from every side. — Report loaned by 
Major Willis Milner of Birmingham, Alabama. 



» 



EARLY RAILROAD ENTERPRISES 115 

to say we will need three hundred thousands tons per annum. 
This at $3.15 per ton, the price from Montevallo to the Gulf, 
will pay $94:5,000 to three railroads south from Montevallo for 
transportation, or seven and a quarter per cent on thirteen mil- 
lion dollars, the amount necessary to build three first-class 
railroads to the Gulf. . . . 

" Coal, as a fuel for railway engines, is destined to save mil- 
lions of dollars. It has been found by actual experiment that 
the cost of running a locomotive with coal is less than one half 
the expense of running with wood as fuel. Experiments have 
been made on the Illinois Central, the New Jersey Central, — 
in fact, throughout the Northern States; and even in Massa- 
chusetts, where coal is worth six dollars and over per ton, it 
is found that the saving in expense, is equal to one half over 
wood. From a very intelligent source, the calculation has been 
made, that the saving from the use of coal instead of wood as a 
fuel on the railways in the Union will be ten millions of dollars 
per annum, or one per cent on the cost of the railroads in the 
country. 

u The superintendent of the Cambria iron works writes me 
that the cost of pig iron to them is seventeen dollars per ton. 
It is fair to say that we can manufacture iron rails at a cost of 
fifty dollars per ton in Jefferson and St. Clair counties. I 
would not advise an attempt at manufacturing iron rails by 
the Central or Northeast and Southwest Railroad companies, 
until the coal and iron can be brought together by railroad. 

" When the Central is built through the coal mines, and the 
Northeast and Southwest Railroad along the Red Mountain, we 
will have every facility for the successful manufacture of iron 
rails. But if we were to commence now in the woods, as it were, 
we would work under many disadvantages. The Central might, 
after reaching Elyton, bring coal to that point and make a be- 
ginning. The machinery for iron manufacture is heavy, and 
the transportation of men, provisions, machines, coal, and iron 
by wagon would be very expensive. I have an offer from a re- 
sponsible party to manufacture in Alabama all the iron we may 
need. He states that he thinks it can be manufactured at fifty 
dollars per ton. Here we have a positive evidence of the im- 
portance of our iron mines. 

u In my estimate of cost for the Central Railroad, I put the iron 
rails at sixty-five dollars per ton. the average price for railroad iron 
in our State. There are now building in our State, twelve hun- 
dred miles of railroad which will require 110,000 tons of iron, 
which at sixty-five dollars per ton, will be $7,150,000 for iron 
rails. We can deliver it here at home ten dollars per ton cheaper 
than we can buy it. This will save to the State outright, 
$1,100,000, besides the incidental benefits from building up in 
our own State such an important interest. I know there is an 
indisposition in Alabama to embark in any new enterprise. Our 



116 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



people are the most cautious in the United States, and must 
see before they believe. Suppose the people of Pennsylvania and 
Ohio had acted thus. To-day we would be paying an exorbi- 
tant tribute to Great Britain for rails. 

" When I was engaged on the Georgia State road, I became 
acquainted with the people along that road — their habits, and 
their means. Beyond their actual wants for food, they raised 
nothing at all. The men moped around and shot at a mark. 
The women seemed to do but little, whilst their children, poorly 
cared for, sauntered about from place to place, as if their highest 
thoughts were bent on catching rabbits, opossums, or some such 
small game. What was the use of working, when it would cost 
them two dollars per bushel to get their wheat to market, and 
then only get one? 

" In 1857 I went back again, and what a change ! The rivers 
were the same, the Kenesaw Mountain had not changed, the 
6 Crooked Spoon ' still rolled along, the men and women that 
once I knew were there, the boys had grown to men, and the girls 
to women; but their mien was changed. The old men stood 
erect, as with conscious pride they looked upon the waving fields 
of grain. The matrons busied themselves about their dairies and 
their looms; whilst the sturdy boys were grappling with the 
plow. What had brought this change about ? Listen for a while, 
and soon you will hear the iron horse storming along. He stops 
at a station for fuel and water — a man gets off the train. He 
is a Charleston man, or perhaps the agent of the Montgomery 
Mills. The cars go on, and he goes to the house. He meets 
the farmer — they have met before. His business is to buy 
his grain. Strange but true, that the demand for wheat 
should be so great as to induce the merchant to buy at the 
farmer's door. He offers $1.50 per bushel, cash, for his 
crop and furnishes the sacks to put it in. i That won't do. 
Savannah was here yesterday, and Columbus the day before, 
and they offered more.' Here is the key to this change. This 
solves the mystery. The great State road — the iron horse — the 
dollar and a half per bushel, cash, tells the tale. 

" It is hard for a man who has lived in Alabama seven years 
to account for the deep and widespread suspicion and want of 
confidence in such investments. There seems to be a holy horror, 
so to speak, of all railroad corporations. We cannot understand 
why it is, that whilst the States all around us, both in their in- 
dividual and corporate capacities, are using every exertion to 
build railroads, the people of Alabama seem to regard them with 
suspicion and distrust. They seem to be afraid to subscribe to 
build them, or to have anything to do with them. It must be 
acknowledged, however, that until recently, the merits of the 
railway have not been fully tested. The last years have given 
to us facts and figures that will alter and settle the most cautious 
minds in favor of railroads. Their great usefulness and public 



EARLY RAILROAD ENTERPRISES 117 



benefit place them far above any invention of the age in their 
claims for generous consideration and public favor. They have 
lately become as much a necessity of the age in which we live as 
our cotton gins, negroes, and mules, or as our public buildings, 
schoolhouses, or places of worship, and the only question now is 
as to the best means to build them. The Central Railroad is 
acknowledged by all to be the most important road in the State 
for the interests of the people of Alabama. It will bring them 
together in a community of interest — social, commercial, and 
political. It will open to their industry a new field for their 
energy and capital, by affording facilities for transporting their 
minerals to market. It will tend greatly to effect their com- 
mercial independence by bringing the trade of North Alabama 
and Tennessee to our seaport at Mobile and establishing there 
an emporium second to none in the South. It will give to us 
of the South what the countries in the North most produce, and 
to these a rich market for all their surplus productions. It will 
unite the various railroads in the State at its Southern terminus, 
which, like those of Georgia, will meet there to distribute it. 
Congress has granted to the road four hundred thousand acres 
of land, which it can appropriate to building the road, provided 
it is completed by 1866 — ten years from the date of the grant. 
If it is not done, the land reverts to the government. In such 
an event, we know well, we can never get the offer again. 

" There is not a man who has seen the effect of the Mont- 
gomery and Pensacola Railroad, the Mobile and Ohio, and the 
Southwest Georgia railroads on the same class of lands, but will 
say two dollars per acre is a small price for all these lands. Some 
will command ten dollars and some even twenty dollars per acre. 
Six years ago I came to Butler County on the survey of the Pensa- 
cola Railroad, and actually had to take my corn along from Green- 
ville, south; and just before, in the same region, our probate 
judge bought a section of land for $67, and the year the road 
was located sold it for 1,070, bought it back again, a few weeks 
after, for about $2,000, and the other day asked what I thought 
of his taking from $12.50 to $15 per acre, or from $8,000 to 
$9,600 for it. This is pine land, and but the type of hundreds 
of thousands of acres more in southeast Alabama that need but 
the iron rail' to make them whiten with the snowy fleece. Six 
years from next May remain to build these roads, or we lose the 
land, which, once reverted, we all know well can never be re- 
gained. We have now 1,180 miles of railway, built, building, 
and part provided for, intending to reach, at some future time, 
a market at Mobile, from the northeastern part of the State 
alone, that must cross the marsh if they reach the city. But this 
miry, muddy, bottomless swamp lies just in the path of all, and 
which there is, as yet, none so bold as to attempt to cross. 

* Next, the Central Railroad must be built, and right away, if 
we wish to get the active aid of North Alabama and turn the 



118 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



two great arms of the Memphis and Charleston Road into feeders 
for our trade. 

" The road from Nashville to Decatur is a part of the New 
Orleans, Jackson, and Great Northern Railroad, projected by 
the city of New Orleans direct to Nashville and Louisville by 
way of Jackson (Mississippi), Aberdeen, and Tuscumbia, and 
once recognized by Nashville, as her road to the Gulf. Our 
citizens of the North have, by their energy and ability, thwarted 
the intended alliance, and induced the Tennesseans to come to 
Decatur, at the foot of navigation, on the upper Tennessee, in 
the center of the great valley of North Carolina. New Orleans 
has silently watched the move, and has simply stopped to breathe 
and look around. From the late reports of the Nashville railroad 
companies, we find, that for want of faith in our works, they 
have turned their eyes to New Orleans again, by way of Decatur 
and Aberdeen. This must be checked by a certain show of work, 
or New Orleans, backed as she is by the State of Louisiana, 
will stretch her arms across from Aberdeen to Decatur, and thus 
close forever our hope of getting aid from North Alabama to 
unite our hitherto dissevered State, and to develop the mineral 
wealth that lies right in the path to our seaport city. If this 
movement can be stopped, we can give to New Orleans from 
Decatur, by the Central Railroad to Elyton, and then by the 
Northeast and Southwest Road and its certain extension from 
Meridian to New Orleans, a route twenty miles shorter than 
by way of Aberdeen, Canton, and Jackson, Mississippi. 

" She certainly will build the road from Meridian to New 
Orleans, and by adopting our line can save the building across 
the mountains from Aberdeen, and get a shorter line ; but unless 
we move in twelve months, it will go on, and then we will 
lose from off the Central Road, if ever built, the trade from 
Nashville to New Orleans — no small amount. On the Atlantic 
side, the two great rivals, Charleston and Savannah, are in the 
field again to reach Memphis — destined soon to be the greatest 
city in the South — on their shortest route by way of Jackson- 
ville, Guntersville, and Decatur, in this State." 

The report made a voluminous document. The ♦route desig- 
nated by Mr. Milner was practicable and feasible, and the cost 
placed at an exceedingly low figure. The engineer had been, 
as he afterward expressed it, " raised and educated in the 
Georgia system of railroads, every one of which was paying 
dividends." He accordingly outlined his railroad on Georgia 
principles. 

The report was presented to Governor Moore in the latter 
part of 1859. The governor sent it in to the legislature with 
his recommendation, stating in his message that the young 



EARLY RAILROAD ENTERPRISES 119 



engineer had, in his judgment, performed his duty ably and 
well. It passed into the hands of the senator from Calhoun, 
Judge Thomas A. Walker, and of the senator from Dallas, Hon- 
orable J. M. Calhoun, on a Saturday afternoon. The first 
thing Monday morning, or as soon as the rules admitted, Judge 
Walker made a motion to lay the report on the table, and pro- 
ceeded to make a speech to kill it. 

Milner remarked of this episode: "I felt that I was on 
trial, and every word of that speech was burned into my 
soul. The judge began by remarking that the State had al- 
ready pledged her faith to build a road via G-untersville, and 
that if the two roads were begun they would both fall by the 
wayside, and if completed, they would never pay on account of 
their competition, with each other." Referring to the region 
through which the projected line was to pass, Judge Walker 
made a statement that spread all over the State in a very short 
time. " That country up there," said he, " is so poor that a 
buzzard would have to carry provisions on his back or starve 
to death on his passage." This saying characterized the Hill 
Country for many years. 

Then, leaning over the table, the judge took up the heavy 
manuscript. "Who is this engineer who writes this great book 
of instructions and recommendations to the legislature of Ala- 
bama, and asks that this mess of trash be published at the 
expense of the State? His very statement of the cost of build- 
ing this railroad is satisfactory evidence that there is no reliance 
or confidence to be placed in his report or in his statements. 
Who is he, anyhow? I never heard of him before he was ap- 
pointed by Governor Moore." 

J ohn Milner, sitting through it all, observed afterward, " This 
was my first attendance on the legislature of Alabama, and, if 
what Judge Walker said was true, I was a gone-up man." 

But Judge Walker's verdict was not the only one. Judge 
Calhoun followed, " and," said Milner, " when Calhoun got 
through I felt like a convicted felon ! " In the face of this 
opposition, however, a motion was made by Senator Burnett of 
Butler, that the report be printed. Governor Patton seconded 
it. A few others spoke in its favor, but it looked dead, as dead 
as any railroad measure was ever killed in Alabama. George S. 
Houston then took hold personally, and used his influence to 
have the report printed. " I have never ceased to thank him," 



120 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



Milner said ; " that was the turning point of my life, and then 
and there was the beginning of the city of Birmingham." 

Thus the report was printed, and became, in reality, a State 
paper, making a sensation all over the South. The statistics were 
used generally throughout Alabama by railroad promoters and 
speakers for the next twenty years. 



CHAPTER IX 



INTERNAL CONDITIONS OF STATE AND OUTBREAK OF WAR 

Struggles of the South and North Railroad. Alabama more interested in 
States' rights than in railroads. Cotton alone was " gentlemen's trade." 
Isolated condition of iron-masters. Facts are stubborn things. The State 
pronounced indubitably weak in industrial affairs. Gathering of the 
thunder heads. Civil War breaks out. Coal and iron business steps to 
the front. Josiah Gorgas appointed chief of ordnance of Confederacy. 
Career of General Gorgas. His command of Old Mount Vernon Arsenal. 
Marriage to daughter of Governor Gayle. Military facts of South. Bird's- 
eye view of ordnance affairs. Limitations of Confederate States. Tac- 
tics of the master soldier. Steps in making of ordnance department. 
Orgamzation of Confederate Nitre and Mining Bureau. Stimulation of 
coal and iron production. J. W. Mallet detailed at central laboratory. 
How the greatest department of the Confederacy was created " out of 
nothing." Testimonials of colleagues of General Gorgas. A great mili- 
tary feat. 

LIFE was not given to the South and North Railroad, 
the great State road, until the year 1860, when the leg- 
islature of Alabama passed the law adopting John T. 
Milner's recommendations as to the route and granting a loan 
of $663,135, "on condition that the entire line be graded and 
prepared for iron by the end of five years." Frank Gilmer at 
once merged his various other interests into the one railroad. 
A company was formed in the fall of 1860, with Milner still 
chief engineer, to complete the line in the five years stipulated. 
Just at this particular time, however, Alabama was more in- 
terested in discussing States' rights than she was in railroad 
enterprises. 

Cotton was the principal industry, the one idea, the one 
hope of the majority of Alabama men. Cotton planting was 
"gentlemen's trade," whereas iron making and railroad con- 
struction were considered of service where they contributed 
solely to agricultural interests. The sum total of operations in 
the coal and iron business in the various counties of the mineral 
region was not then known. Owing to the lack of railroad 
communication and mail facilities each county was more or less 
isolated from the others. No union of coal or iron men was 



122 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



possible, or dreamed of. The few iron-masters of Calhoun 
and Talladega counties were as far away from the iron-masters 
of Tuskaloosa, Bibb, and Shelby counties as though hundreds 
of miles separated them. Nothing pertaining to the industry- 
had then penetrated the State at large, as is evidenced to-day 
by the complete lack of public records or statistics referring to 
the matter. 

"Under the regime of the cotton planters Alabama is weak 
in her internal improvements," said De Bows, in 1856, " weak 
not only in the little already accomplished, but weak in the 
disinclination of capitalists to invest their means in a way to 
advantage the people and promote State welfare. . . . Facts are 
stubborn things. Let us then look them in the face, nor attempt 
to mollify harsh features. . . . "What becomes of the twenty- 
five million dollars which our commerce distributes annually 
among the planters of Alabama? The census of 1850 states that 
in Alabama one million dollars only is invested in manufactures, 
a portion in twelve cotton factories, and fourteen forges and fur- 
naces, as compared to Georgia's two million and Tennessee's 
three million." This plain speaking critic of early industrial 
affairs points out the prevalent conditions. He deems the 
causes, " lack of public spirit, no foresight, an utter indifference 
to the future, ... an unsettled state of feeling as though Ala- 
bama were a temporary, not a permanent, home, ... no means 
to fix population." 

And again John Milner speaks: 

"As yet, the State of Alabama has done nothing to divert 
the enterprise of her citizens in their internal improvement in- 
vestments into the channel that would tend most to develop the 
resources of the State, and render her people commercially in- 
dependent. Alabama has been a kind of public common, and all 
of our neighbors have quietly proceeded to partition her off among 
"their own great seaport towns, with but little hindrance either 
from the people or the government. . . . 

" The State of Georgia charges two dollars per ton on Alabama 
iron seeking a market over her roads than she does on Georgia 
iron. We know but little of the future. Three fourths of a cen- 
tury ago the questions that now threaten to destroy the Union 
of the States were not felt at all. The history of confederated 
republics teaches that they are not everlasting, and that each 
State, or section of the confederacy, must, from time to time, fall 
back to its original isolated condition. The elements which will 
return the States to their original condition are now at work all 



INTERNAL CONDITIONS OF STATE 123 



over the Union, and the United States may soon be so many 
independent sovereignties, each challenging, as of yore, the com- 
merce of its neighbor, and then woe to the State that has looked 
quietly on without an effort to aid in directing the enterprise of 
her citizens to the developing of her own resources when it was 
practicable, and has suffered her life blood to be drawn away to 
build up commercial centers for her people, on soil over which 
she can exercise no control, and in passing through which she will 
be subjected to the mortification of seeing the labor and industry 
of her citizens taxed almost to prohibition and ruin. Alabama 
now occupies this position, and the only practicable measure that 
can redeem her from threatened vassalage is to turn these de- 
pleting railroads into feeders for the great central arteries leading 
to Mobile, and making for Alabamians a commercial emporium 
there that, in case of accident, will offer every facility for the per- 
fect transaction of all their commercial business. Let us pre- 
pare ourselves, and if the storm blows over and the States of 
South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Florida, Mississippi, and 
Louisiana stand by us in friendly alliance, all is well. But if 
not, let us be able to say that Alabama is independent of the 
world anyhow, and all is well still. 

" Were it not that our senators and representatives in Congress, 
sentinels on the watchtowers, are continually warning us of the 
threatened dissolution of the Union, and the consequent over- 
throw of that Constitution which authorizes free trade between 
the States, and our certain return to our original isolated and 
self-dependent condition, I would look with gratitude upon these 
enterprises of our neighboring States to develop the resources 
of Alabama, and would not lament over the exhaustion of what 
little individual capital we now have in our State in these foreign 
enterprises. But I fear they are thus helping to forge for them- 
selves the commercial chains which, in case of accident to our 
confederacy, will bind them to pay tribute forever to the States, 
within whose borders lie the great centers of trade they have 
helped to build up." 

As for the great State railroad, Frank Gilmer was pushing 
its construction along and finding it uphill work. The clouds 
of war were now gathering in every quarter of the horizon. 
The Limestone County stockholders abandoned their interests 
in the railroad. Gilmer took up their subscriptions, and re- 
leased them from their obligations. It could be foreseen that 
when the war was over, come what would, this great railroad 
enterprise would be a blessing to Alabama. Gilmer now con- 
trolled personally a three-quarter interest in the Central, and 
he changed the terminus from Montevallo to Calera. Together 
with his brother, William Gilmer, John T. Milner, and several 



124 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



of the Montgomery stockholders, chief among them Daniel 
Pratt, Gilmer arranged for the construction of iron works to use 
the Red Mountain ore. The construction of this — the first fur- 
nace of Jefferson County, the Oxmoor plant — will be detailed 
in a subsequent chapter. 

At the bursting of the storm the South and North Railroad 
was just approaching the mineral region, having crossed the 
borders of the Cahaba coal field. Construction work was then 
suddenly paralyzed for lack of funds. At length Colonel Gilmer 
succeeded in getting aid from the Confederate Government, and 
the railroad was extended from Calera to Brocks Gap, near 
Goold's coal mines. This gap, a sixty-foot cut of solid rock 
several hundred feet long, through the backbone of Shades 
Mountain, was an obstacle Gilmer could not surmount. His 
contractors, unable to secure powder, put their men on the work 
with crowbars and wedges. The railroad was graded only as far 
as Graces Gap during the war. This cut was not finished 
until two years after the war, under Superintendent J. F. B. 
Jackson. In 1908 the mountain at Brocks Gap was tunneled by 
the Louisville and Nashville Railroad authorities. 

At this early period practically every railroad in the State 
received some aid from the Confederate Government, and the 
shackles, heavy upon the coal and iron business, were thrown 
off. The mineral region got now its first chance. Every policy, 
every energy, every industry of Alabama now became resolved 
into a war measure. The large majority of railroad, coal, and 
iron men had voted against secession. Only when the issue 
became irrevocable did they stand by the State. 

From this time on until the four years' strife was stilled, 
the products of mine, furnace, mill, forge, shop, and foundry 
were such as to surprise not only the State, but the whole coun- 
try. A sudden and tremendous activity now charged the mineral 
region. 

And not precisely an automatic movement this! As it is 
always found, there was a man behind the guns. This man was 
Josiah Gorgas, appointed chief of ordnance of the Confederacy, 
April 8, 1861, with rank of brigadier-general. 

Up to his resignation from the United States army, a few 
weeks previous to his appointment in the Confederate army, 
General Gorgas had seen twenty years of service. Not only had 
he served at the various depots and arsenals of the States, north 



INTERNAL CONDITIONS OF STATE 



125 



and south, but he had also been assigned in Mexico, and had had, 
too, the advantage of a tour of study and inspection abroad. 
Josiah Gorgas was born in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, in 
1818, the year the first blast furnace of Alabama was erected, and 
the year also that witnessed the birth of James R. Powell and 
Josiah Morris, who in 1871 helped John T. Milner found the 
city of Birmingham. 

Young Gorgas received appointment to the West Point mili- 
tary academy in 1837, and graduated in 1841. Among those 
at the old barracks with him were William Tecumseh Sherman 
and George H. Thomas, one class above, and Ulysses S. Grant, 
two years below. Mr. Gorgas' class rank lifted him to a place 
in the engineering or ordnance department. He obtained one 
year's leave of absence in 1845, and went to Europe. By nature 
keenly and quietly observant, thorough and painstaking, Lieu- 
tenant Gorgas' inspection of arms and arsenals abroad was no 
superficial essay, but a well ordered and systematized under- 
taking. On his return he was ordered to report to the Watervliet 
Arsenal in Few York State as assistant ordnance officer. At the 
outbreak of the Mexican War the young lieutenant went on field 
duty. He served with distinction, it is officially recorded, at the 
siege of Vera Cruz. And when that point was captured Lieu- 
tenant Gorgas assumed command of the ordnance department 
there. Reporting back to Watervliet, at the close of hostilities, 
he served there and at various northern points until early in 
1853 when he was placed in command of Mt. Vernon in 
Alabama. 1 

As a matter of course the courtesies of Mobile were extended 
the young officer, and entree into the homes of the leading fami- 
lies of that city at once accorded. At the home of Honorable 
John Gayle, in particular, the young lieutenant of ordnance be- 
came a frequent guest. 

Old Judge Gayle, statesman-like and convivial, was one of 
the celebrities of the times. He was governor of Alabama during 
the period when the first railroad of the State was chartered. 
Having entered the country in territorial days, he had held 
positions in the early legislatures, the circuit and supreme courts, 
had served as speaker of the House, and had later been appointed 

1 Data obtained from Records of the War Department; Southern His- 
torical Papers loaned by widow of General Gorgas, William Garrett, and 
various other Alabama historians. 



126 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



by President Taylor judge of the United States district court, 
which office he held until his death in 1858. 

It was not so much the judge, however, who drew the young 
West Pointer as the judge's daughter Amelia. Miss Gayle was 
a young girl of a pronounced grace of mind and manner. She 
was, indeed, very like her mother, and her mother was a sin- 
gularly charming woman. During Andrew Jackson's adminis- 
tration when Francis Scott Key was sent to Alabama on a mis- 
sion to Governor Gayle — ever a States' rights man — the author 
of the " Star Spangled Banner " was the governor's guest in 
the Old Manse at Tuskaloosa. He wrote a sonnet to his hostess 
that in those days was widely quoted. 

Of the several daughters of Governor and Mrs. Gayle, Mary 
became the wife of General Hugh Aiken, and Amelia married 
Lieutenant Gorgas a few months following their meeting, and 
they went to live at the gloomy old Mt. Vernon arsenal. And 
here, among the 1812 guns and under salute of the flag, in the 
year 1854, their first child was born, their son, William Crawford 
Gorgas, destined in the later years to achieve such fair public 
record in the medical department of the United States Army. 
He was later appointed colonel by special act of Congress for 
his work in staying the yellow fever ravages at Havana, and in 
1909 has made the Panama Canal Zone a habitable station. 

Lieutenant Josiah Gorgas was promoted in 1855 to captain 
of ordnance, and in the following year transferred from Mt. 
Vernon to Kennebec, Maine. He was then assigned to command 
of the arsenal at Charleston, South Carolina, and in 1859, to 
Frankford Arsenal at Philadelphia. In October of 1860 he was 
selected as a member of the ordnance board detailed to serve at 
the war department, in Washington, District of Columbia. It was 
this latter circumstance coming atop of his already varied and ex- 
tensive service that enabled Josiah Gorgas to obtain his rather re- 
markable and specific knowledge of inside conditions in things 
military. For instance, at the capture of J ohn Brown, at Harper's 
Ferry, certain correspondence between Brown and the chief of 
ordnance of the department at Washington came, as a matter of 
course, under Captain Gorgas' eye. These papers gave informa- 
tion of the state and condition of the ordnance stores in the 
United States, and pointed out the facts that such supplies 
throughout all the slave-holding States were inconsiderable, and 
that, in some localities, utter destitution prevailed. Every mili- 



INTERNAL CONDITIONS OF STATE 127 



tary fact relating to the South now stood out in sharp outlines 
to Captain Gorgas' vision. He could not deceive himself, could 
conjure up no flying pennants or drums of victory. 

Bound to the South as he now was, by ties of family, of friend- 
ship, and of intimate alliance and marked sympathy with the 
political conditions of the isolated section, he had come to 
believe that her cause was just, and he knew that she was weak. 
At the same time, attached as he was to the service, to his 
brother officers, and to the Union, bred as he had been on the 
standards of the United States Military Academy, his decision 
to resign came out of a night in Gethsemane. So was it, indeed, 
with many and many another over whom spread the delicate wings 
of the spirit of old West Point ! It is written of Captain Gorgas 
that this decision " involved the most painful act of his life." 

General Morris Schaff says : " I cannot think of those days 
or of my friends of the South, haunted as they were by a specter 
which no casuistry could bar out, most of them later to climb the 
hill of old age and poverty, with the past lying below them in 
the shadow of defeat, — I cannot think of all that without see- 
ing West Point suddenly take on the mysterious background and 
fated silence of the scenes of the Greek tragedies. But, thank 
God! over the voices of the Furies I hear Athene pleading for 
Orestes." . . . 

Captain Gorgas left Washington. He came again to Alabama 
which he had now adopted as his State, and quietly entered 
civilian life, taking up residence with his wife and children 
in Mobile. President Davis at once invited the experienced and 
efficient officer to take the position of chief of ordnance of the 
Confederacy. He accepted, and at once assumed what General 
Bragg has termed, " the most important scientific and adminis- 
trative position in the Confederate Government." As has been 
indicated, Captain Gorgas was fully and minutely informed of 
the precise status of ordnance affairs in the Southern States. 
He realized acutely, as did other officers of the United States 
army, the utter impotence of the South, from a military view- 
point, to sustain a prolonged conflict. He took up the burden 
fully aware of its weight. He stood alone in a barren field, his 
eyes wide open. Sweeping the horizon, he saw not a gun, not 
even a mountain howitzer, fit for service. 

The gathering Confederate forces mustering in all over land, 
huge and heedless, were practically destitute of arms and am- 



128 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



munition, of infantry accouterments, cavalry equipments, and 
artillery. They were not even prepared to take the defensive, 
much less essay offensive. What few guns they had were mainly 
1812 relics. The only ammunition in store was useless stuff, 
left over from the Mexican War, cramping the arsenals at Mt. 
Vernon and Baton Rouge. There was not in the entire Con- 
federacy one million rounds of small arm cartridges. The small 
arms were almost wholly smooth bore, altered from flint to 
percussion. Of percussion caps there were less than a quarter of 
a million, and no powder, barring 60,000 pounds of old cannon 
powder captured at Norfolk, and distributed in small quantities 
throughout the arsenals. Not a single battery of serviceable 
field artillery was to be found at any point. 

Furthermore, the Southern arsenals had no means for con- 
structing any of the material of war, having served always as 
mere depots, distributing centers, and points of rendezvous. Not 
a single machine above a foot lathe was installed anywhere ex- 
cepting at one station in Fayetteville, North Carolina. Not an 
arm, not a gun, not a gun carriage, beyond the jejune workings 
of Andrew Jackson's smiths, had ever been constructed in the 
South. Not for fifty years, except during the Mexican War, had 
a single round of ammunition been prepared in the Southern 
States. No powder other than for blasting had been made. 
There was neither powder mill nor laboratory. Neither lead 
nor saltpeter was in store anywhere, and the only lead mines 
were on the northern limit of the Confederacy in Virginia, — a 
precarious situation. Copper was but just beginning to be pro- 
duced in East Tennessee. Coal or iron mines were, to the military 
authorities, scarcely tangible propositions. Blast furnaces were 
an unknown quantity. But one cannon foundry existed, that 
at Richmond, and but two rolling mills, one at Richmond, Vir- 
ginia, the other at Shelby, Alabama. There was no skilled labor. 
" Not a single manufactory of either arms or munitions was 
within the limits of our country," General Bragg has observed. 
But there were one hundred and fifty thousand men marking 
time on both sides the Mississippi, infantry, cavalry, and artillery 
regiments, waiting to be equipped by May 1, 1861, — and here 
it was April 8, 1861. 

Knowing all the facts beforehand, General Gorgas had but to 
take one falcon look. Then quickly he swooped upon the Mont- 
gomery legislators. His estimate of the needed preparations 



Makers op History 





INTERNAL CONDITIONS OF STATE 



129 



stunned that body. Expecting to whip the North in a ninety 
days' fighting, Montgomery had no intention of standing for 
any such outlay as the West Pointer called for. There was 
nothing for General Gorgas but to make the best of what limited 
means were perforce granted him for the creation and control of 
his own special department, involving as it did problems of 
mining, of importations, manufacturing, transportation, on a 
scale nation wide. 

He had in the history of hero-mankind one predecessor — 
Cadmus — and but dragon's teeth to sow in very truth ! Only 
that which he had at his fingers' ends, his West Point science, 
and the fruit of his twenty years being among the growling guns. 
By this alone, and backed by the Confederate Government, he 
must breed out of the very dust of the earth armed men and 
guns and belching batteries. By tracing his way, step for step, 
the whole miracle that he wrought is discerned to have been an 
exceedingly simple business, merely a matter of organization, 
of system, of technique, and hard work. 

General Gorgas' first move was to detail an efficient officer 
abroad to secure arms at certain designated foreign points. 
Captain Eaphael Semmes was also on a hunt for skilled labor 
and munitions of war, having been sent north by President Davis 
directly after Alabama had passed the ordinance of secession. 
General Gorgas then at once undertook measures to improve and 
increase the equipment of every government concern, and impress 
or make contract with every iron making establishment already 
on the ground. Mt. Vernon Arsenal was furnished with steam 
power and new machinery. A foundry at Eome, Georgia, that 
of Noble & Sons, was induced to undertake the casting of three- 
inch rifles after drawings furnished at Montgomery. The iron 
works at Holly Springs, Mississippi, were already turning out 
ordnance supplies under contract with the government. Im- 
mediately preparations to manufacture powder and saltpeter were 
begun. Two sub-bureaus were created to handle the mining and 
importation ends. 

A corps of officers having in charge the production of iron in 
Alabama for the use of the Confederacy was organized under 
title of the Confederate Mtre and Mining Bureau. This board, 
through the government, either bought the properties outright 
on liberal terms, or gave financial assistance, money to be re- 
funded in products. Fifty per cent of the cost of equipment was 

9 



130 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



offered to private owners to encourage opening of new coal and 
iron mines. Several hundred conscripts and several thousand 
negroes were employed in the mines and rolling mills. Coal and 
iron production was stimulated not only throughout Alabama, 
but all through Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and 
Georgia. All workers in any branch of government employment 
were exempt from military service in the field, although re- 
quired in the ordnance department to be drilled daily and trained 
for every emergency. 

General Gorgas, now directing operations from Richmond 
headquarters, located new arsenals and depots (twelve all told), 
work shops, armories, foundries, and laboratories in every 
Confederate State. The greatest of these, the arsenal at Selma, 
Alabama, will be approached shortly. Points were selected as 
remotely as possible from chance of attack, yet near enough to 
some main line of railroad to have transportation facilities. Gen- 
eral Gorgas was careful to make choice of agricultural sections 
so that cheap living could be assured the operatives. He took 
no chances. 

At the central laboratory at Macon, Georgia, he detailed 
in command a chemist and a scientist of national reputation, 
J. W. Mallet, then a professor at the University of Alabama. 
He could thus be sure that under expert direction his ammuni- 
tion would be made uniform in quality and in dimensions, and 
made so that it could fit the guns and the cannon for which it 
was designed. For one of the first problems confronted by the 
department was how to render serviceable the odd and miscella- 
neous collection of arms with which the early regiments were 
equipped. General Gorgas everywhere selected officers with dis- 
crimination: experts, scientists, technical men. The officer he 
appointed in command of the Richmond Arsenal was William 
Le Roy Brown, a distinguished educator, who later became 
identified with Alabama's progress in his twenty years' service 
as president of the Alabama Polytechnic Institute at Auburn, 
where he was succeeded at his death, in 1902, by Charles C. 
Thach. 

In view of the uncertain chances of supply of materials from 
the North, or across seas, General Gorgas sent an order far and 
wide to gather together all sorts of odds and ends of materials 
from domestic sources. 1 The country was raked for leaden 

1 Lieutenant-Colonel J. W. Mallet, C. S. A. 



INTERNAL CONDITIONS OF STATE 131 



water pipes and window weights out of which to make bullets; 
for church bells and old sugar boiling kettles that could be 
melted and rerolled into thinner copper for percussion caps; 
for worn-out tools, farming implements, and machinery of no 
more use for house or farm that could be converted in various 
ways into material of war. That is the way the ordnance de- 
partment of the Confederacy was created, " out of nothing." 

General Gorgas says himself that the beginning time from 
1861 to 1862 was the darkest period in the ordnance department. 
Powder was being demanded on every hand, guns were being 
called for in all directions, "the largest guns for the smallest 
places." Everything had to be extemporized — guns, swords, 
pistols, spurs, haversacks, tents, artillery harness, cavalry sad- 
dles, bridles, bits, trace chains, horseshoes, soldiers' shoes, car- 
tridge boxes, belts, canteens, hollow ware — the whole inventory 
from "A to izzard" of the make-up of the soldier in the field 
and in every branch of the service. Very early in the war, as 
General Gorgas foresaw, the blockade was so effective as to cut 
off the Southern States from supplies by sea as well as by land. 
" Alabama," writes the historian, Walter L. Fleming, " owing 
to its central location, suffered more than any other State." 
He speaks also of the development of diversified industries born 
out of the exigencies of the times as well as of necessity for 
production of materials of war. 

The picture shows handicap after handicap ; no stock on hand 
and no labor but the shiftless and unskilled slave hands, and 
they could only be utilized in subordinate departments. Often 
when workmen were gathered and were being trained, the de- 
partment had frequently to give them up in answer to the press- 
ing call for more men in the ranks. Moreover, a portion of their 
duty was to organize and drill battalions for temporary service, 
"for ordnance men, at the anvil and file one day, had to 
shoulder the musket the next," states Lietutenant- Colonel Mallet. 
Furthermore, the wants of these men and their families for 
food and clothing had to be considered and supplied. And there 
was lack of adequate transportation even for food supplies. As 
time passed, and the enemy pressed nearer, whole establishments 
that had taken months to create had to be quickly removed, 
and the machinery and materials and the men and their families 
transported to new quarters only to be again dislodged. To 
further tangle affairs came depreciated currency. The want of 



132 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



money of purchasing value was felt in every branch of the 
service, first and last. Our Assistant Inspector-General, Major 
J. F. Girault, reported late in the war at Richmond : " The 
soldiers are not paid, and the people hold claims against the 
government of long standing. The credit of the government is 
greatly impaired, and nearly all its officers and agents are 
crippled in important transactions for lack of funds. Bonds 
and certificates are not available." Moreover, the whole country 
was throttled by the blockade. 

In the face of all these handicaps General Gorgas and his 
able corps of officers built up in a little over two years foundries 
and rolling mills, smelting works, the best equipped powder mill 
in the United States, and a chain of arsenals, armories, and 
laboratories equal in their capacity and their improved appoint- 
ments to the best of those in the United States, and stretching 
link by link from Virginia to Alabama. And to do it took 
sharp, quick work. It was not work that attracted such public 
attention as though Gorgas had been at the front. Yet no officer 
in the Confederate Army had a more important post. Not one 
contributed more to the measure of the success won by our troops 
in the field than he. Not one has been accorded less public 
recognition. 

"His patient industry, high scientific attainments, and great 
administrative capacity soon placed us above want. He remained 
to the end of the war at the head of his department, and grew in 
favor as time and means enabled him to develop the dormant 
resources of the country." 1 

Lieutenant-Colonel Mallet says: 

" Of General Gorgas himself, during those troublous times, 
three impressions especially occur to me: first, the quietness of 
demeanor and absence of impatience or confusion with which his 
work was done; second, the capability which he possessed of 
working through subordinates. Clear and decided in his general 
instructions, he was always ready to give to officers under him the 
amplest field in which to exercise their own discretion and in- 
genuity as to details, to show what they could do in the way of 
overcoming difficulties and accomplishing results, and no one 
could be more fair, more generous in recognizing whatever in- 
dividual merit was thus exhibited by his subordinates; no one 
less anxious to claim such merit or praise for it for himself; 
third, the breadth of view with which he continually strove, not 

1 General Braxton Bragg, C. S. A. 



INTERNAL CONDITIONS OF STATE 133 



merely to keep up with the overwhelming demands on each day 
and each month for war material for immediate use, but to 
steadily improve the organization of the bureau under his charge ; 
to make it more efficient in personnel and material. The work- 
men in the shops had a wonderful admiration and esteem for 
him. Gentle and quiet in his manners, without an effort he 
exercised the most perfect control of his men." 

Jefferson Davis remarked in a letter referring to Gorgas' 
work : 

" There is much to learn of the struggles which were made to 
maintain our cause by those who gathered no laurels in the field, 
but without whose labors there would have been no laurels to 
gather." And he highly commends the chief of ordnance, saying, 
" He achieved results greatly disproportioned to the means at his 
command." 

As Lieutenant-Colonel Mallet clearly states: 

" General Gorgas created and managed the most efficient bureau 
of the Confederate war department, that bureau which was based 
upon the most scanty resources at the outset, which was called 
upon to respond to the most special, the most varied, and the 
most urgent demands, and which was developed to the highest 
degree of efficiency in spite of the serious difficulties arising from 
the ever shifting conditions imposed by the events of the war." 

To again quote Braxton Bragg: 

" It was the only successful military bureau organized during 
our national existence," and all the more surprising, the general 
further declares, "because Gorgas has less foundation to go on 
than had any other officer in the Confederate service." 

Certainly it is a distinctly great military feat, one of the 
greatest on record in any land. Its immense significance may, 
perhaps, be grasped in full measure only by the military man 
or those intimately conversant with military affairs. It is not 
recorded in any history in any detail whatsoever. As the long 
hidden facts come one by one slowly into public view, it is per- 
ceived that the character of the ordnance department of the 
Confederacy that until now has hovered a silent, shrouded figure 
in the background of the battle field, moves to the front. By 
reason of the odds it hurled against and overcame, it stands forth 
in a bright light, winged and triumphant. 



CHAPTER X 



CONFEDERATE ARSENAL AND NAVAL FOUNDRY 

Arsenal transferred from Mt. Vernon to Selma. Most advantageous point 
in Confederacy for manufacturing purposes. Description of Arsenal. 
Summary of auxiliary works. Confederate army officers stationed at 
Selma. Career of Major J. C. Compton. How John Veitch came to the 
arsenal. Major Thomas Peters and Matthew Thomas Smith report for 
duty. Milton H. Smith handles transportation of Confederate troops 
with masterly hand. Review of young Smith's work. Establishment 
of great naval foundry. Confederate naval officers in charge. George 
Peacock engaged by Commander Catesby ap R. Jones as superintendent. 
Achievements of the English foundryman. Early records of pipe busi- 
ness of United States. Churchill and Company's iron works at Colum- 
biana. Shelby County. How the great guns were cast at the foundry. 
Making of the flagship Tennessee. Contemporary workshops and 
armories. Auxiliary works in Montgomery. Richard Fell's record. 
Christian F. Enslen in the ranks. Reconstruction of quartermaster's 
department by John Mason Martin. 




HE embryonic period in the formation of the Confed- 
erate ordnance department having passed, there came 
the word of the fall of New Orleans in 1862. It 



sounded throughout the Confederacy as brave Pushmataha said 
his own death would sound to his tribe in Alabama, " like the 
fall of a big tree when the wind is still." 

At once perceiving that Mt. Vernon was out of position, owing 
to its proximity, to Mobile, General Gorgas ordered the arsenal 
and all its holdings transferred to Selma. The "Bluff City," 
named and built up, as will be recalled, by one of the early vice- 
presidents of the United States, William Rufus King of Ala- 
bama, was, by all odds, the most advantageous point in the 
Confederacy for manufacturing purposes. Far from the enemy's 
lines, and located in the heart of the black belt, it was accessible 
by stage, river, and railroad. Not only was it the chief market 
town for the surrounding country, but it was, at this era, main 
headquarters for artisans, mechanics, and trades people, and 
called for that reason the " Pittsburg of the South." The facili- 
ties here for the production of cartridges, saltpeter, powder, 
shot and shell, and for the assemblage of lumber, coal and iron, 



ARSENAL AND NAVAL FOUNDRY 135 



were greater than at any other point then existing in the South. 
Selma, therefore, became the main depot of equipment for troops 
and fortifications, for the manufacture of every sort of war 
material for the Confederacy. 

The Union general, E. F. Winslow, pronounced the value of 
these Selma works, established in the main by General Gorgas, 
" from a mechanical, social, and war point of view, almost in- 
estimable." According to Miller, " In no two years of her history 
did Alabama make greater manufacturing strides than from 
1863 to 1865." 

For the making of the great arsenal a site was picked out 
directly overlooking the Alabama, known to-day as " River View," 
then a rambling collection of cotton sheds sprawled over a ten- 
acre field. Just as the Richmond arsenal was improvised in one 
night by General Gorgas, out of a group of tobacco warehouses, 
so now these Selma cotton sheds were swiftly remodeled into 
great shops, while other frame structures were added, making 
twenty-four in all. These buildings were fitted up with engines 
and machinery of every description for the manufacture of 
artillery and small arms, ammunition, siege guns, carriages, 
caissons, cartridges, ammunition boxes, chests, gun caps, and 
shot and shell. Each allied department, such as lumber, coal, 
and resin, was systematically organized. The arsenal's powder 
building alone (under charge of W. R. Rogers) covered five acres 
in the eastern section of the town. Men, women, and children 
to the number of eight hundred were employed, and this number 
gradually increased to almost double by 1865. The total number 
of Confederate government employees at Selma has been esti- 
mated at ten thousand. John Hardy says : " The city was a 
perfect jam of people." The existence of the following works 
in conjunction with the Confederate arsenal will convey a no- 
tion of the extent of the activity: Central City Iron Works, 
Captain H. E. Ware; Central City Foundry, W. S. Knox, M. 
Meyer, W. R. Bill, S. C. Pierce; Dallas Iron Works, John Rob- 
bins, Jacob McElroy; Alabama Factory, Thomas B. Pierce; 
Saltpeter Works, Jonathan Haralson; Phelan & McBride Iron 
Works, Brooks & Gainer; Campbell's Foundry, Selma Iron 
Works, Pierce's Foundry, Nitre Works, comprising eighteen 
buildings and five furnaces ; Washington Works, Tennessee Iron 
Works, Horseshoe Manufactory, Selma Shovel Factory, and 
various roundhouses. 



136 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



Among the officers of the Confederate army stationed at the 
arsenal at various intervals during the war were Colonel James 
L. White, Major J. C. Compton, Lieutenant R. V. Chambliss, 
and Captain R. M. Nelson who was inspector of arms. Colonel 
White was the officer in command. Concerning him are the fol- 
lowing notes received from the adjutant-general of the United 
States army : 

" The official records show that J ames L. White was appointed 
from Florida as captain of artillery, Confederate States army, 
to rank from March 16, 1861, and that he was appointed to the 
temporary rank of lieutenant-colonel, to rank from August 27, 
1862. He was assigned to duty at Mt. Vernon Arsenal, Alabama, 
April 1, 1861 ; to Brierfield Arsenal, Columbia, Mississippi, De- 
cember 3, 1862, and to Selma Arsenal, Selma, Alabama (date 
of record not found.) He is reported as lieutenant-colonel, com- 
manding Selma Arsenal in 1862, 3, 4, and as late as January 28, 
1865. No further record of him has been found." 

Major J. C. Compton served under Colonel White as second 
officer in command during the last year of the war. He had had 
a rapid rise from the ranks, was appointed early in 1863 an 
officer of the ordnance, and had personal charge of the ordnance 
depot at Vicksburg. Later he served at Meridian with Johns- 
ton's army, and from that post was assigned by the secretary 
of war, to Selma. Major Compton's family was of old Colonial 
stock. His father served in the War of 1812, and was at one 
time surveyor general of the State of Georgia. Major Compton 
was a Georgian by birth and a graduate of Oglethorpe University. 
Since the war's close he has practiced law at Selma, and has 
served several times as State senator and president of the 
Senate. 

Among the several hundred men located at the old arsenal 
were a few who became associated years afterward with affairs 
in the Hill Country. The Veitch boys, Thomas S. Alvis, William 
Wallace McCollum, Matthew Thomas Smith, and Major Thomas 
Peters were among them. The Veitch boys were sons of an old 
North Carolina iron-master, John Veitch of Lincolnton, who 
had made shot and shell at his father's forge, for the South Caro- 
lina Nulliflers, back in 1832, at the time the Stroup family 
worked there. The Veitch sons were all brought up to the trade, 
and located in various sections through the Southern States. 

One night in the late summer of 1861 at Jacksonville, Ala- 



ARSENAL AND NAVAL FOUNDRY 137 



bama, they attended a meeting at which. Honorable J. L. M. 
Curry, M. C. (standing under a flag that had within its folds 
smoke of Manassas), made an eloquent war speech. The Veitch 
brothers dropping their tools, John in the lead, to shoulder mus- 
kets, enlisted in Selden's battery. At Mobile it was found they 
were skilled iron workers, so they were detailed along with Glid- 
den's nephew, J. J. Mitchell, to Selma. Here they remained 
until the war's close. They were among the first furnacemen 
and foundrymen of the Birmingham and Sheffield districts, 
and their sons and grandsons are at work in the same field 
to-day. 

Thomas S. Alvis was a furnaceman from Virginia. He had 
served his apprenticeship at the Old Dominion Nail Works and 
the Tredegar Iron Works at Richmond. As one of the experts 
selected by General Gorgas' agent, he came to Selma with a group 
of other skilled artisans. He worked at the arsenal and con- 
structed the rolling mill at Helena. After the war he located at 
Brierfield, and with Giles Edwards rebuilt the plant there in the 
late eighteen-sixties. After acting as superintendent for a time, 
Captain Alvis leased the furnace from General Gorgas in the sev- 
enties, and made iron for car wheels. His youngest daughter is 
the wife of James G. Oakley of Bibb County, Alabama, whose 
father ran the Ashby Brick Works before the war. 

William McCollum was a steam engineer in the arsenal. He 
had located in Selma as a boy, working first at steam and me- 
chanical engineering and later as a tin and coppersmith and sheet- 
iron-worker. At the outbreak of the war he furnished supplies 
to the Government, and when materials gave out, he enlisted in 
the army and was assigned to the arsenal. He later became 
identified with Brierfield, and probably has retained more in- 
formation relative to the great ordnance depots at Selma 
than any living man. 

Matthew T. Smith, one of the iron-workers at the arsenal, was 
an ex-cavalry man. He had served on the firing line at Corinth 
together with his brother, Anthony Smith, but after one year's 
duty was transferred to Selma. Young Smith was, like Michael 
Tuomey, an Irishman born and bred, and of a family of soldiers 
and scholars. He ventured into the States early in the eighteen- 
fifties, and when the Civil War broke out, he and his brother 
were located at Camden, Alabama, in the carriage and wagon 
making business. M. T. Smith worked at the arsenal until 1865, 



138 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



when he returned to Camden. He eventually joined the indus- 
trious little group of pioneers of the city of Birmingham where 
he lived until his death in 1909. 

Major Thomas Peters was in command of army transportation 
under General Richard Taylor. He had been appointed in 1861 
by the governor of Tennessee as quartermaster of State troops. 
He was then assigned to the staff of General Polk until the 
assumption of the command of the army of Tennessee in 1864 
by General Hood, when he was detailed to Selma. The major 
was a character of singular interest. He was the old Tennessee 
type, standing over six feet, lithe, erect, and vigorous, with an 
aquiline nose, high cheek bones, and jet-black hair. He looked 
for all the world like an Indian, it is said, and in fact, some fifteen 
years later, up in the Birmingham District, the major observed 
good-naturedly, when brought into a certain legal controversy 
over some government land business : " Why, men, here you are 
getting after me for taking up a little bit of a piece of govern- 
ment land — as everybody else is doing — when you stole the 
whole of it from my ancestors ! " 1 And in truth there was Indian 
blood in his veins, and he was ever a wanderer and an enthusiast 
of the hills. Besides being a soldier, he had seen service as river 
man, cotton planter, railroad contractor, trader, prospector, and 
cotton broker. He was born in Wake County, North Carolina, 
in 1812, but was bred in middle Tennessee. During the eighteen- 
fifties he was taking contracts to build levees on the Mississippi 
River, and at the war's outbreak was engaged with Sam Tate in 
the construction of the Memphis and Charleston Railroad. 

Being of an ever active and inquiring mind, he was led daily to 
the arsenal on matters relating to his station at Selma. For 
instance, the brand of pig iron sent down by Moses Stroup from 
the Oxmoor furnaces engaged his interest and he determined to 
follow up the source of these iron supplies, and get at least one 
look into the magic country that bore them. All this, however, 
is a story we shall come to by and by. 

Another man identified with these times, although not sta- 
tioned at Selma, was a young railroad man named Milton H. 
Smith. 

1 Great confusion regarding titles to the mineral lands of the South 
resulted from the fact that the Confederate Government claimed title to 
all mineral lands owned by the United States Government, and issued 
patents on same. This matter has not been fully cleared up until the 
present day. E. N. Cullom of Birmingham, Alabama. 



ARSENAL AND NAVAL FOUNDRY 139 



" About the time of the battle of Shiloh," says Captain A. C. 
Banner of Mobile, " when Confederate troops were being hurried 
from Memphis to Corinth, mention was made around the camp 
fires of the excellent work a Mr. M. H. Smith was doing. He 
was handling, with a poor equipment, over the Memphis and 
Charleston Railroad, thousands of our soldiers with rapidity 
and safety. In this matter he did great service under many 
serious difficulties, for the Confederacy." 

Mr. Smith is to-day president of the Louisville and Nashville 
railroad. He is a tall, broad-shouldered man, " regular Abe Lin- 
coln build inside and out." In the early days of his career, as 
now, he had the reputation of being laconic, square-dealing, quick 
and keen with an energy and intensity almost savage. Like Al- 
bert Fink, he was a born railroad man, and he had been in the 
business from the first round of the ladder. Even in his position 
as yard-master at Chattanooga for the Memphis and Charleston 
Railroad, during the war, he had a grip on his lines such as no 
one else on the road had. He could shoulder big business even 
then, as his transportation of the Confederate regiments, at a 
crisis, proved. 

As to his life, the details are brief. He was born in 1834 at 
Windom, Greene County, in western New York, on a farm within 
rifle shot of Lake Chautauqua. His people moved to Chicago and 
he received his schooling there, though he left school and began 
to shift for himself very early. His first job, like that of George 
B. McCormack, James W. McQueen, and Don Bacon, who are 
all men to be connected with these chronicles in the succeeding 
generation, was that of a telegraph operator, but before long he 
was beginning to railroad down in Mississippi on the old Missis- 
sippi Central. During the years from 1850 to the outbreak of 
the war, young Smith became familiar with railroad operations 
throughout Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and Tennessee. He 
knew all the big clan of fighters led by Jones, Pollard, Gilmer, 
and the rest, and he caught the game sense early. In addition to 
the problems he grappled with during the war, he adopted for the 
South some of the most advantageous points of the tariff made 
especially by the United States Government under Grant, for the 
United States military railroads. " It was the simplest tariff 
I ever had anything to do with," he observed. He eventually put 
into practice every important measure, and originated others, and 
made and worked the tariff between New York and New Orleans. 



140 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



In each instance practicable he worked the tariff between two 
points only, made the list of articles with rate placed alongside, 
then adjusted these rates to those on steamship lines, with in- 
surance added. This tariff system which he devised in antebellum 
days is still used by steamships plying between two points. 

None of the very heavy ordnance manufactured at Selma was 
turned out at the arsenal ; it came from the naval foundry. This 
was an altogether separate establishment of the Confederate Gov- 
ernment and latterly under command of the Confederate navy 
department. Situated about one-half mile below the arsenal, and 
like it near the water line, it stood in a great square set about with 
brick buildings, including offices, gun foundry, machine shop, 
pattern shop, molding shop, rolling mill, melting furnace, three 
cupolas, puddling furnace, and blacksmith shop. The navy yard 
was one of the auxiliary departments of the foundry. 1 This big 
foundry, employing three thousand workmen by 1865, was the 
gradual outgrowth of a private enterprise started by Colin 
McRae. In 1861 a sight of the rich deposits of brown ore made 
accessible by the old Selma, Rome and Dalton Railroad, had in- 
spired Mr. McRae to undertake the erection of a foundry for 
the casting of cannon of the heaviest caliber. Backed by the 
Confederate war department and under contract with the govern- 
ment the work progressed rapidly. President Davis later called 
upon Colin McRae to go abroad in connection with Confederate 
finances, and relieved him of his immense undertaking at Selma. 
His works were assumed jointly by the war and navy departments 
and Colonel Rains was made general superintendent. Later in 
1863, it was agreed that the navy department should take sole 
charge, and in April of that year, Catesby ap R. Jones was ordered 
to command the naval foundry and to complete the armament of 
the ironclad Tennessee and the various gunboats then in con- 
struction. 2 

1 J. J. Mitchell of Birmingham, Alabama. 

2 Hon. Joseph Forney Johnston, United States Senate: Description of 
Selma works in December, 1863, on file in the War Department, Wash- 
ington, D. C, as follows: "The Foundry works at this place are next in 
capacity to the Tredegar works at Richmond. Cannon are cast and fin- 
ished. Shot, shell, and other ammunition are manufactured in large 
quantities, and shipped to Atlanta, Mobile, and other points. The rolling 
mills are intended for manufacturing railroad iron, armor plates, etc. At 
the Navy Yard is being built a steamer two hundred and seventy feet long, 
forty-five feet wide, to be double plated with plates two inches thick, to be 
finished in February. At the arsenal are manufactured arms and ammuni- 
tion of all kinds for shipment. Extensive repair shops are connected with 
the arsenal, large quantity of powder in magazine. At saddle and harness 



ARSENAL AND NAVAL FOUNDRY 141 



Coming fresh from the battle line, from heroic and successful 
endeavor to save Richmond from the enemy's fleet, Commander 
Jones was greeted in Selma with enthusiasm. His record was 
known far and wide. To him assignment to the shops at Selma, 
which was far inland, when he longed so for sea duty and action 
at the front, meant irksome business. But having made such a 
first-class ironclad out of the famous old frigate Merrimac 
(using, by the way, Alabama iron from the Cane Creek Iron 
Works, in a portion of its construction), Commander Jones was 
now called to more work of the same caliber. The following 
letters bearing on his work at Selma have been received from 
Thomas M. Owen: 

Richmond, Sept. 16th, 1864. 

Comr. C. ap R. Jones, C. S. N. 
Chf. of Ordnance \Vorks, 
Selma, Ala. 

Sir: 

Your letter of the 5 inst. has been received. 

The services which you are rendering at Selma are regarded 
by this Department as more important to the Country than any 
which you could otherwise perform in the Navy, and not less 
valuable to its best interests than those which are being rendered 
by any other Naval officer. 

You can be placed in the Provisional Navy at any time, and 
you were not so placed under the President's views of its organi- 
zation, only because your services in your present sphere of duty 
were regarded by me as indispensable, and were you now with- 
drawn from it, I would find it extremely difficult to supply your 
place. I trust that the efficient discharge of the important duties 
devolved upon you, and which necessarily preclude you from Sea 
Service, will not be found to decrease your right to, and your 
chances of, advancement in a profession in which you are re- 
garded as in all respects a most efficient officer. 

Very Respty 

Yr Ob Servt. 

S. R. Mallory, 
Sec Navy. 

shops are manufactured saddle harness, knapsacks, haversacks, canteens, 
etc. At wagon shops are manufactured eighteen wagons per week. There 
are also several foundries used by Government, and owned by citizens. 
Large quantities of commissary and quartermaster stores are received, 
stored, and snipped. There are from six thousand to seven thousand bales 
of cotton in store. Employed in the works are some eight hundred mechan- 
ics and detailed men and a large number of blacks. Military strength of 
post, one company of boys and exempts doing present duty, one hundred 
county militia (men over forty-five years of age, eleven able to do duty, 
never been drilled or seen service), and the mechanics and detailed men 
above mentioned, who are liable to serve in times of danger. Total, one 
thousand men. There are no forces other than militia nearer than Atlanta 
or Enterprise. December 3, 1863." 



142 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



The following extract is taken from a letter headed, " Ordnance 
Office, War Department, Washington, D. C, Jany. 28, 1884," 
and was written by S. V. Benet, brigadier-general, and chief of 
ordnance, in reference to the ordnance books kept by Catesby ap 
R. Jones while in charge of the ordnance works at Selma : 

" These documents have been examined carefully by the Board. 
They are very interesting and evince great care and ability in 
their preparation. The correspondence between officers of such 
scientific renown as Rains, Catesby ap R. Jones, Garesche, Brook, 
and Cuyler is of particular interest not only to the military man 
but to the general reader, as illustrative of the faithful and in- 
telligent work of able men under adverse circumstances." 

Among other Confederate naval officers associated with Catesby 
ap R. Jones at Selma were Commodore Farrand, Lieutenant 
Fairfax, and Lieutenant Reardon. To handle the operating end, 
Commander Jones obtained the services of George Peacock, the 
most expert foundryman then in the South. 

Mr. Peacock had come to the United States from England in 
1848 at the instance of the great Swedish engineer, John Erics- 
son, who later designed and built the famous little iron monster 
that grappled with Catesby ap R. Jones' Merrimac. 

He was a Yorkshireman, born in 1823 at Stockton-on-Tees, 
the home town of Thomas Whitwell. As a boy young Peacock 
was bound out for seven years by regular indenture, to learn 
the business of founding in all of its branches. At length, start- 
ing out independently in Liverpool, he established a reputation 
when still a young man, and rose to such rank in the trade 
that he attracted an offer from Ericsson. 

Once across in the States, however, George Peacock again 
struck out for himself. By 1852 he had become superintendent 
of Coller, Sage, and Durham's Cast Iron Pipe Works at West 
Troy, New York, with five hundred men under him. He then 
took charge of big undertakings at various points, manufacturing, 
for instance, all piping for the city water works at Cleveland, 
Ohio, and at Louisville. It was Peacock who introduced in 
America the casing flask for casting pipe on the end, a method 
which revolutionized the whole system of pipe making. He in- 
vented what is known as the drop pattern, adopted later in all 
machine molding. He originated too, the " green sand core bar," 
used in casting soil pipe, the first successful system for casting 
branches, curves, tees, and crooked connections of all kinds of 
pipes, the collapsible core bar, and numberless shop tools and labor 



ARSENAL AND NAVAL FOUNDRY 143 



saving devices, together with machinery for farm, railroad, shop, 
and foundry. Besides being a foundryman so expert, Peacock 
was somewhat of a scientist and metallurgist. His aptitude for 
invention amounted almost to genius, and in foundry circles his 
name came in those days to lead the trade. 

In 1861 George Peacock was employed as superintendent of C. 
B. Churchill and Company's foundry at Natchez, Mississippi. 
This firm followed McElwain's iron works at Holly Springs, in 
the manufacture of munitions of war for the Confederacy. 
While here Peacock invented an improved method for making shot 
and shell by which the molder turned out four times the number 
made by the method then everywhere in vogue, and with less per- 
centage of imperfections. Directly after the fall of Corinth 
the firm moved to Columbiana, Shelby County, Alabama, though 
it was still under contract with the Confederate government, 
and George Peacock was sent there to construct the foundry, 
machine shop, and blacksmith shop and to superintend the 
work. George F. Peter, president of the Climax Coal Company 
at Maylene, Alabama, has obtained from Amos E. Lawrence, a 
molder in the Churchill foundry, the following notes : 

a C. B. Churchill and Company made eight and ten pound shot 
and eight and ten pound shells, and possibly some thirty-two 
pound shells. They also made Parrott shells for Blakeley guns 
up to one hundred eighty pounds. In addition to this work for 
the Confederate government, they carried on a general foundry 
and machine business, making chilled rolls, furnace thimbles, 
pinions, and boxes. They also made bridge housings, railroad 
chair plates, and some fence work. A specimen of their iron 
fence work may be seen to-day around the Horace Ware lot in 
the Columbiana cemetery, about two hundred yards south of the 
old courthouse. They also did casting and machine work iri 
brass. They employed about seventy-five men, and wages ranged 
from $1.50 per day for common labor to $6.00 per day for molders, 
all paid in Confederate money. Wilson burned and destroyed 
everything connected with this plant on his raid in 1865. 

"A year or two later Hamilton Beggs built a small foundry 
on the site of the old plant and manufactured stoves for a few 
years. The iron used was hauled on wagons from the furnace 
at Shelby. C. B. Churchill with his family lived in the house 
now occupied by W. B. Browne, opposite the new courthouse. 
After Wilson's raid Mr. Browne moved to New Orleans, Captain 
Churchill moved to Plymouth, Massachusetts, and Beggs moved 
to Birmingham in 1879. The site of the foundry can now be 
located only by a pond of water and a pile of iron, formerly iron 
borings, but now run together into a mass of iron." 



144 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



George Peacock built a beehive oven and made coke from 
coal he found on the Raglan estate in St. Clair County. The 
first coke making in Alabama was by William A. Goold, in 
1855. Peacock's venture was the second. Both were for foundry 
use and not for furnace use, however. 

It was while Peacock was constructing the works at Colum- 
biana that Commander Jones, on the lookout for just such a 
practical and experienced man, endeavored to secure his services. 
But the Yorkshireman would not budge until, by special act of 
the Confederate congress, the office of superintendent of the naval 
foundry was created, with a salary double that of Commander 
J ones. 1 Having accepted the newly created position, the foundry 
did work during Jones' administration that astonished the 
world. Cannon and armor plate made of Alabama iron were 
turned out here. Practically every corps in the Confederate 
States army was supplied its big cannon from this foundry. 

The great guns, from two to three feet in diameter through 
the breech, were from ten to eighteen feet long and "heavier 
than locomotives," McCollum says, "massive, tough, and in- 
destructible." They were banded with wrought iron bands on 
the breech to keep from bursting. " The foundry at Selma," 
notes the historian Fleming, "was pronounced by experts to be 
the best in existence." An interesting fact to be noted here is 
that the pig iron used in the great gun making was mainly that 
sent by the Bibb furnace, while the old Shelby Iron Company and 
the Cane Creek iron works furnished the quality used in the 
armor plate for the rams and gunboats. 

In pursuance of an order from the secretary of the navy, George 
Peacock made a chemical and mechanical examination of every 
brand of pig iron at the command of the Confederacy, in order 
to determine which might best serve for making naval guns. 
Peacock reported the Brierfield or Bibb furnace iron the stuff " for 
strength, malleability, fluxibility, and fine texture of fiber." It 
was on ground of his report that Brierfield was pressed into 
service and the rolling mill constructed. It was on this ex- 
periment that Peacock put into successful operation the re- 
verberatory furnaces, melting iron by means of pine knots. 
"As high as fifty thousand pounds of iron was melted at one 
lighting and reduced to fluid in eight hours; at the same time 
the tensile strength of the metal being increased from thirty to 
forty per cent." 

1 William Wallace McCollum of Brierfield, Alabama. 



ARSENAL AND NAVAL FOUNDRY 145 



Closely associated with Peacock in his experimental and practi- 
cal work was Simon Gay, an expert gunmaker. Gay had learned 
his trade with T. S. Alvis at the Tredegar Iron Works in Vir- 
ginia and had specialized on gun and cannon making. He was 
acting superintendent of the Bolona arsenal and cannon foundry 
in Chesterfield County, Virginia, just before coming to Selma. 
Both Gay and Peacock remained in Selma after the close of 
hostilities. Peacock started a foundry of his own in a spacious 
log house, the oldest building of Selma, where in 1825, Marquis 
de Lafayette had been entertained. Mining cars became one of 
his specialties. The " Peacock car wheel " became celebrated in 
the trade and his foundry grew in time to very fair proportions. 
The same business is being carried on to-day in Selma by George 
Peacock's sons. 

The old Confederate navy yard, an auxiliary of the foundry, 
was located on a four-acre prairie lying low by the river. The 
buildings of rough timber consisted of offices, machines, and 
blacksmith shops, saw mill, and lumber yard. Here were con- 
structed the battleships that met Farragut in Mobile Bay, August 
5, 1864; the ironclad ram, Tennessee, and the gunboats, Selma, 
Morgan, and Gaines. Made of Alabama wood, the gunboats 
were thickly plated with wrought iron, covered with three layers 
of iron plate, each section two by six inches and bolted down with 
iron bolts. All were mounted with guns manufactured at the 
foundry, were charged with powder and ball and supplies from 
the arsenal, and were launched and let off down river to break the 
blockade in Mobile Bay. 

The flagship Tennessee was Catesby ap R. Jones 5 pride. He 
constructed her machinery and battery. Her Shelby iron armor 
plate had no superior even in the Federal navy at that time. Re- 
garding the subsequent test in battle when she was subjected to 
a cannonade of two hundred guns, Miller's history says, the 
Tennessee stood alone against seventeen Federal vessels. Her 
smokestack and steering gear were shot away, and when she 
surrendered she was being rammed on all sides by the prows of 
the Federal ships, but so perfect was her armor that it was not 
penetrated by a single shell. 1 

1 An old copy of " Iron and Steel Association Bulletin, " loaned by John 
E. Ware of Birmingham, contains this record : 

" We recently asked the Shelby Iron Company to confirm the statements 
concerning the supplying of the armor plates for the Tennessee by the 

10 



146 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



Workshops, armories, mills, and depots of supplies operating 
in line with the arsenal and foundry were located in various 

Shelby works, and in reply have received the following interesting letter 
from Mr. Witherby, assistant secretary of that company." 
Extracts from letter : 

" ' When I came here, nearly twenty years ago, we had plates, merchant 
bars and strap rails on hand, made entirely of Shelby iron and rolled in this 
mill. Some of the plates, known to us now as ' gunboat iron,' are still in 
our storehouse, but they have been slowly disappearing under the demand 
of our blacksmiths for an 'extra good piece of iron,' for 'this job' or 
'that particular place,' etc. Some of these plates are eight inches by three 
inches and others eleven inches by five inches, and of various lengths; orig- 
inally they were, perhaps, ten feet long. 

" 1 At the time of my arrival the wreck of the rolling mill had not been 
removed. The housings and rolls were in place just as they had been left, 
and so remained until they were sold to the Central iron works, at Helena, 
in this county, where they now are. 

" 'Shelby pig iron was also shipped to the Confederate arsenal and foun- 
dry at Selma, Alabama, in 1864, where the Tennessee was constructed and 
fitted out. This iron doubtless went into guns and other castings for this 
vessel. Catesby ap Jones was superintendent of the arsenal, and with his 
senior in rank, Franklin Buchanan, both pupils of that sea-god, Matthew 
Galbraith Perry, wrought out the Tennessee. They were as full of pro- 
gressive ideas regarding steam and armor as their master, and nothing 
but the scanty means at their disposal prevented a much more formidable 
ironclad than the Tennessee from being set afloat. 

" ' Car wheel makers are now the exclusive users of our iron, and it will 
not be difficult for them to believe that the Shelby pig iron now made, if 
wrought into plate, would prove fully equal to anything tested in the past. 
" ' Very truly yours, 

'"Ed. T. Witherby, 

" ' Assistant Secretary.' 

" Mr. Peacock, who had charge of the Confederate gun foundry at Selma, 
Alabama, in 1863 and 1864, informs Mr. Witherby that the armor used on 
the Confederate gunboats was in the shape of narrow thick strips, about two 
or three inches thick, and not more than twelve inches wide, usually about 
six inches wide. 

" In Farragut's Life and Reports the Tennessee is described as follows : 
' The ironclad steamer Tennessee was two hundred and nine feet in length 
and forty feet broad with projecting iron prow two feet below the water 
line. Her sloping sides were covered with an armor from five to six inches 
in thickness. She carried six Brooke's rifled cannon in casemate, two of 
which were pivot and the others broadside guns, throwing solid projectiles 
of one hundred and ten and ninety-five pounds respectively. Her steer- 
ing gear was badly arranged and much exposed.' After the fight on August 
5, 1864, Admiral Farragut reported it as ' one of the hardest earned victo- 
ries of my life. I did not know how formidable the Tennessee was. Not a 
shot entered the vessel. We poured our [the Hartford's] whole broadside 
of nine-inch solid shot within ten feet of the casemate. Her smokestack 
shot away, her steering chains gone, she hoisted two white flags.' 

" Admiral Porter, in his report of this fight, says that ' the hull of the 
Tennessee was virtually uninjured by the shots from the monitors. Only 
one fifteen-inch shot penetrated her armor, while the eleven-inch shot made 
no impression on her beyond shattering the port shutters, and had it not 
been for the carrying away of her exposed steering gear and smokestack 
Buchanan's calculations might have been verified.' 

"The defences of Mobile Bay, at the time of the famous battle, consisted 
of two forts, a line of piles, and a double line of torpedoes, behind which lay 
the formidable ram Tennessee and three wooden gunboats. The attacking 



ARSENAL AND NAVAL FOUNDRY 147 



other sections of Alabama besides Selma. There was a navy yard 
on the Tombigbee in Clarke County, near the Sunflower Bend, 
where several small boats were fashioned and gunboats in process 
of construction by 1865. Old Mt. Vernon arsenal, although dis- 
mantled, was still utilized as a depot for lumber. Here all the 
moss used for making saddle blankets was gathered and pre- 
pared. There were armories at Tallassee and Demopolis. At 
Montgomery there were numerous works of importance, and in 
charge of the Confederate rolling mill at this point was Richard 
Fell. Mr. Fell had been trained in the iron business at Wheeling, 
West Virginia. Before coming to Alabama he had been asso- 
ciated in the capacity of superintendent and manager with the 
Hillman brothers in Tennessee and Kentucky. After construct- 
ing several blast furnaces and rolling mills, he became identified 
with Horace Ware in the Shelby operations. He was then em- 
ployed by the Confederate ordnance department to construct the 
celebrated Brierfield rolling mill. Practically the whole of his 
life was spent in the iron business in the South, for after the war 
he built rolling mills in Atlanta and Memphis, and superin- 
tended iron works at Chattanooga. A further venture in Ala- 
bama was his organization at Helena, in 1872, of the Central 
Iron Works or the Shelby Rolling Mill Company. Associated 
with him at this time were his son-in-law, R. W. Cobb, later 
governor of Alabama, B. B. Lewis, Richard Fell, Jr., and Charles 
Albert Fell. 

At the same time that Richard Fell was in Montgomery, a 
certain sturdy young German, Christian F. Enslen, was working 
in one of the auxiliary departments of the Confederate govern- 
ment shops. As foreman of the smiths, he turned out from his 
department an immense amount of horseshoes for the cavalry 
brigades. His history is interesting. When barely fifteen he had 
left his native town of Wiirtemberg. Landing at New Orleans 
in 1845, he was swept into the tide of the Mexican War. He 
enlisted in the Alabama Rifles, young as he was, and saw more or 
less field service. When the war was over, he was mustered out in 
Montgomery and had to shift for himself. He took up the black- 
smith's trade to start on, and built up at Wetumpka a fair-sized 
business, and married there. He enlisted in the Confederate 

fleet consisted of seven sloops-of-war, including the flag-ship Hartford, six 
steamers, and four ironclad monitors. Each sloop had a gunboat lashed on 
the port side to take her through if her machinery should be disabled. One 
of the monitors was sunk by a torpedo early in the engagement." 



148 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



Army at the first call for troops, but was assigned to the shops 
at Montgomery instead of to field service. Like John Veitch and 
Hamilton Beggs, he came up to early Birmingham, after the 
war, and set up shop and branched out in various lines. He 
railroaded a couple of years. He then went into the mercantile 
business on a big scale. In 1885 he organized, with a capital of 
$100,000, the Jefferson County Savings Bank, with his son, 
Eugene F. Enslen, in Birmingham. In 1909 he is the president 
of this bank, and owner of large properties and mineral lands 
in the Birmingham district. 

Serving also at Montgomery during the war as post quarter- 
master, was John Mason Martin, whose father, Governor Mar- 
tin, hailed from the old Cedar Creek district. At the outbreak 
of the war Captain Martin was practicing law in Tuskaloosa. 
Enlisting in the Fifth Alabama Infantry he was assigned to 
Montgomery. Here he found tKe quartermaster's department 
in chaos. He converted the State penitentiary into a manu- 
factory of army supplies, and systemized the conduct of the 
whole department. In late years John Martin has represented 
the Sixth Congressional District in the United States Congress. 



CHAPTER XI 



COAL MINING IN CIVIL WAR PERIOD 

Counties supplying coal to Confederate Government works. Captain John 
M. Huey agent at Selma. Cahaba field site of first underground mining. 
List of mines in operation during war. Important discoveries traced 
to old "bomb proofs." Work in Dailey Creek Basin. Early records of 
Piper and Coleanor. " Graveyards mark the Thompson Mines." Work 
of William Goold. Entrance of Joseph Squire. A remarkable biography. 
. Coal discovered in Kansas and Nebraska by Joseph Squire and first 
mines opened there in eighteen-fifties. Mr. Squire's account of Old 
Montevallo mines. " It was not I who brought the capital into Alabama ! 
I left that to Aldrich and DeBardeleben." Opening of Helena Coal 
mines for Red Mountain [Oxmoor] Company. Origin of various mines 
owned to-day by Tennessee Company, Little Cahaba Coal Company, 
Blocton-Cahaba Coal Company and others. 

THE Alabama coal supply of the Confederate Govern- 
ment during the war period came in the main from six 
counties: Tuskaloosa, Jefferson, Walker, St. Clair, 
Bibb, and Shelby. Every train and barge load was concentrated 
at Selma and distributed from that station to Montgomery, 
Mobile, and other points. John M. Huey of Jonesboro, Jeffer- 
son County, was detailed with rank of captain as agent for the 
Confederate States navy to handle the coal and lumber end at 
Selma. 

" The developments of war showed that in quality and mining 
conditions, the coal beds of Alabama are unsurpassed by any 
bituminous region on this continent," John T. Milner declared. 
Certainly the demand for coal as well as iron at this particular 
time was insatiate. Before the war no more than ten or eleven 
thousand tons of coal were mined per year in the entire State. 

A great impetus was given to the mining of coal in the Cahaba 
field especially. Owing to the construction of the South and 
North Railroad into this field, its development preceded all others. 
" The first regular systematic underground mining in the State," 
says Joseph Squire, in his geological report of 1890, had been 
done in the Cahaba field, in 1856, " at a point in Shelby County, 
one mile west of the Montevallo Coal and Transportation Com- 
pany's present slope." It was begun by private individuals j 



150 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



among whom were John M. Moore of Talladega, Judge Cooper 
of Lowndes, Dr. Miller of Wilcox, and P. M. Fancher of Bibb 
County. The Montevallo coal appears in the ascendancy at this 
period. The Brown mines and the Alabama Company mines 
were both located on the Montevallo seam. Three other well- 
known coal mines were the Goold and Woodson mines on the 
Cahaba River; the Helena mines of Monk, Edwards and Com- 
pany, managed by William A. Goold, and several drifts below 
Helena, near Dailey Creek, termed "bomb proof s." In fact, 
there were scattered all over Bibb and Shelby counties various 
of these temporary drifts. The legislature had passed an act ex- 
empting any man from field service, who, with twenty slaves, 
signed contract to dig coal for the Confederate government. 
This started an exploration for coal all over the counties. " The 
remains of these bomb proofs still exist, and they have led to some 
exceedingly important discoveries in coal," says T. H. Aldrich 
of Birmingham. 

Dailey Creek Basin was opened by refugees from Mississippi 
and elsewhere, among them being Brooks, Gainer, Rogers, Carter, 
Gholson, Herndon, and Thompson. Brooks and Gainer mined 
close to the present mines of the present day. All the coal from 
this basin was hauled in wagons to the nearest point on the 
Selma, Rome and Dalton Railroad, now the Southern, and 
shipped direct to Selma. "The seams worked," Mr. Squire 
states, " were the Clark seam, the Gholson seam, and the Thomp- 
son seam. The method of mining was by drift and horse power 
slopes. No steam power was used. The distance to the railroad 
by the wagon road was twelve miles. With a team of four mules 
and wagon they hauled one ton per day per each team. None 
of them advanced their mine workings very far from the out- 
crop, and all of these mines stopped when the war ended, the 
refugees, with one or two exceptions going back to their former 
homes." 

Practically the entire basin became utterly abandoned and the 
mines were grown up with briers until late in the eighteen- 
eighties when Truman H. Aldrich and his associates revived 
the works and opened up the field to commerce and development. 
The Excelsior Coal Company, captained by T. H. Aldrich, 
sunk two slopes on the Gholson seam in January 1889. One of 
these was the Number One or Gurnee Slope, which was sunk 
over eight hundred feet. Railroads were built also in 1889 con- 



COAL MINING IN CIVIL WAR PERIOD 151 



necting the isolated region with Montevallo, Selma, Blocton, 
Bessemer, Birmingham, and with Helena, Montgomery, and 
points on the Gulf. By means of the steam colliers running 
between Pensacola and the West Indies, several of the coal 
markets of the Gulf of Mexico were eventually supplied by Mr. 
Aldrich with this " old original bomb-proof coal." 

Concerning the Thompson mines, known to-day as Piper, and 
operated by the Little Cahaba Coal Company, and Coleanor, 
operated by the Blocton-Cahaba Coal Company, Frank Fitch of 
Bibb County furnishes the following particulars: 

" W. H. Thompson, of Six Mile, Bibb County, Alabama, lived 
in the early eighteen-fifties in Hinds County, Mississippi. His 
father's name was N. H. Thompson. He and his brother Lewis 
were both planters and owned a large number of negroes. Dur- 
ing the Civil War the enemy set their home on fire and burned 
four hundred bales of their cotton. They hurried away to Ala- 
bama and fled to the Cahaba hills. Lewis Thompson sent his 
son, Julius, and his overseer, with his able-bodied negroes to 
the Cahaba coal field in Bibb County, to mine coal for the Con- 
federate government. They opened the Lower Thompson mine, 
later known as Piper Number Two. N. H. Thompson joined 
them, taking his family and slaves. He located near what has 
long been known as the Upper Thompson mine and now as 
Coleanor. The coal from each of these three mines was from 
the Thompson seam and was hauled by wagon to Ashby, a station 
on the Selma, Rome Road, and Dalton Railroad, a distance of 
eleven or twelve miles. No explosives were used there in mining 
coal, but the pick and bar did the work, and the cabs were hauled 
to the surface with mules. There was no pump to keep the 
mines dry, and the water was carried out in buckets, and conse- 
quently the men often worked with wet feet. It was a severe life 
for them for they had left their comfortable Mississippi planta- 
tions and were, at the mines, crowded into makeshift huts and 
shanties. All the comforts in health and in sickness of the good 
old plantation homes became but memories. Nothing was 
offered to alleviate the deprivations and suffering incident to the 
sudden, death-dealing change. Many died, and graveyards mark 
the Lower and Upper Thompson mines." 

Chief among the early coal workers of this period who stayed 
permanently in the business were Joseph Squire and William 
A. Goold. They were both eventually connected with work 
throughout the Birmingham and Sheffield districts. On the 
field for over half a century these two " lone scouts " of the coal 
regions of Alabama figure, from time to time, all through this 



152 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



narrative. They played the parts of miner, prospector, geologist, 
operator, and discoverer. There is no coal or iron man of Ala- 
bama to whom the names of Joseph Squire and Uncle Billy 
Goold are unknown. Both were indefatigable laborers and en- 
dured every hardship that coal men without capital, influence, 
or worldly wisdom encounter. Out in the field month after 
month, grubbing with tense eagerness for coal, these two small, 
slightly built, wiry men literally gave their lives to the cause. 
Both are to-day about eighty years of age, but they have clear, 
vivid memories, and an acquaintance with the facts of the coal 
business of the pioneer times that can be matched by no one. 

" There were some days," says Mr. Squire, " in my examina- 
tion of the Cahaba field when a human face was not visible to 
me from the rising to the setting of the sun. The only guide to 
my location was the lead of the creeks and branches, or my ap- 
parent distance from some mountain of known location." 

Joseph Squire was the son of an English naval officer. He 
was born November 24, 1829, at Rochdale, Lancashire, England. 

" My mother," says Mr. Squire, " was a daughter of Thomas 
Clegg, who was a lineal descendant of the Adam De Clegg re- 
corded in the Doomsday Book as a Freeholder, living at Cleggs- 
wood, three miles northeast of the Old Cross in the center of 
Rochdale, in the year a. d. 1200. My mother was born in the old 
Half-acre Farm house, a few steps north of the Butterworth Farm 
house, one mile west of Rochdale Old Cross. My parents gave me 
about ten years' schooling in Rochdale, training which was pre- 
paratory to entering the Naval Academy. During this time I 
made my first geological map, showing all the coal fields in 
England. After my father's death mother opposed my going 
either to the Naval Academy or to sea. So I went to work in a 
coal pit that underlay the Newton Race Course. My knowledge 
of navigation helped me in making underground surveys, and 
I made every effort to learn to do any and all kinds of work 
done in the pit. At the age of seventeen I began to do a man's 
work at stripping and grinding the roller and flat cards and 
cylinders of the carding engines or machines in the factories 
of Lancashire. I saved up money to come to the United States 
and. make a new start in life about the year 1849. I then 
served a year's apprenticeship to learn the machinist trade at 
the Peabody Furnace, at the top of Broad Street, Providence, 
Rhode Island. At the end of the year I went west to the region 
of country where Kansas and Nebraska now are. I found vari- 
ous tribes of Indians roaming about west of Independence, Leav- 
enworth, and Council Bluffs. I then began to utilize my early 
geological training in tracing out the carboniferous formation 



COAL MINING IN CIVIL WAR PERIOD 153 



of that region. I opened mines for the supply of those frontier 
settlements, and, when near the river, for the supply of steam- 
boats on the Missouri River. I opened some of them for myself, ► 
and some for others. 

" In the spring of 1859 while in St. Louis, Missouri, I met 
with a company of Alabamians. They informed me that there 
were beds of coal in Alabama of good quality, but stated that 
the efforts to mine it failed to profit them very largely. They 
gave me the address of some of the interested parties, and I 
removed to the Montevallo mines in the fall of 1859. At that 
time the mines were about one and one-fourth miles southwest 
of the present Aldrich mines at Aldrich, Shelby County, Ala- 
bama. I will never forget that time! I had on the best coat 
of broadcloth that I dare say was ever brought into Ala- 
bama ! 'T was the coat got me by my first good partners ! 
But I had only two dollars and a half in my pocket! A man 
with that much has got to be shifty, you know. But, make no 
mistake; it was not I who brought the capital into Alabama! 
No, it was not I ! I left that to Aldrich and DeBardeleben." 

Mr. Squire has prepared the following account of early coal 
mining in Alabama : 

"The mines of the Alabama Coal Mining Company had 
stopped work and every white miner at the Montevallo mines 
was awaiting the first steam engine (for hoisting coal) and a 
pair of thirty-inch cylinder boilers to come from Wilkesbarre, 
Pennsylvania. This was the first steam engine for hoisting coal 
from a slope or pit that was ever brought to Alabama. The 
slope intended for the new hoisting engine was sunk in the shaft 
seam in the overturned measures, at a point on the Range line 
between Range 11 and Range 12, East, Township 24. The 
slope had a rate of dip of 65 to 70 degrees from the horizontal, 
and was sunk down to a depth of about one hundred sixty feet. 
The gangways were started off, but not opened up more than 
each one about fifty feet from the slope, when I got to the mines 
in 1859. 

"William Goold and Jasper H". Campbell had both been at 
work at the Montevallo mines prior to my arrival. Mr. Goold 
was then mining coal in a drift mine in St. Clair County, and 
shipping his coal by flatboat down the Coosa River to Mont- 
gomery. Jasper N". Campbell had charge of the Browne and 
Phil Weaver mine and the rancher's pit (all drifts in the Monte- 
vallo seam) before I arrived at the Montevallo mines. 

"The Fancher or Woods pits or drifts were then abandoned 
for the new Irish pit drift. The mining property at the Monte- 
vallo mines in 1859 was chiefly owned by the Alabama Coal 
Mining Company. Colonel John S. Storrs of Montevallo was 
president of the company. The owners of the adjoining or 



154 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



eastern part of the Montevallo mines were William P. Browne, 
in partnership with Phil Weaver, a capitalist of Selma, and the 
Shelby Iron Company, which latter then owned eighty acres 
north of the Dutch pit and Irish pit. 

" A list of the coal mines that had been worked or started in 
that locality in 1859 includes the Arcade pit, advanced just a 
few yards from daylight; the Brown pit, at a point near the site 
of the Aldrich old slope ; the Irish pit, the Dutch pit, the Whim 
pit, the Wood pit. These places had been opened on the outcrop 
of the Montevallo seam, some of them being driven in only a few 
yards from daylight, when they were abandoned. 

" The above were all of the openings in the Montevallo seam 
and basin. Several openings had been made in the seams of 
the overturned measures previous to 1859. The most important 
of these was made in the Shaft seam, a slope driven down about 
a hundred and sixty feet, at an angle of 65 to 70 degrees. The 
shaft was full of water, and a tram road had been graded from 
said slope to the c chute' at the end of the three-mile branch 
railroad with strap iron and wood stringer track, where the old 
log office and store then stood. On little Mayberry Creek, at the 
intersection of the seam of the overturned measures, a drift 
opening had been made in the Dodd seam, also a drift in the 
Cooper seam, and a test slope had been made or sunk in the Can- 
nel seam. But all of the openings described in both the Monte- 
vallo seam and the seams of the overturned measures were lying 
idle. Not a miner or hand of any kind was at work at any of 
them. The scene was a picture of desolation such as I had never 
seen before. The miners seemed to be building their hopes on 
the hoisting steam engine and boilers coming from Pennsylvania 
as a means of lessening the labor and increasing the facilities for 
mining and getting out coal. The only improvement intended 
was lessening the underground haulage expenses, that being 
borne by the mine owner before the engine arrived. I saw the 
matter from a different standpoint, for I was born within sound 
of the pit sheaves of the Walmesley pit and the rattle of the 
pulleys on a half-mile track. This took the coal trams inside 
of city limits and there delivered the coal to the street carts 
and wagons for distribution in old Rochdale. This same method 
seemed practicable for Montevallo. I went to see the president 
of the Alabama Coal Mining Company, Colonel John S. Storrs. 
I asked him if he had sale for coal, if it was got out. He an- 
swered yes. I then asked him what it had been costing the com- 
pany to mine it. He told me ten dollars per ton. I told him I 
could mine it and put it on the railroad cars for him, all lump, 
free from slack, at one fourth of that price, though I would re- 
quire an advance of three hundred dollars per month for the first 
three months. With that understanding I leased the coal on the 
east side of the Irish pit entrance at $2.17 1 /2 per ton of two 
thousand pounds placed on the railroad cars all lump. Out of 



COAL MINING IN CIVIL WAR PERIOD 155 



the Irish pit I received $2.12% per ton of two thousand pounds 
delivered on railroad cars all lump. 

" I found it very difficult to commence mining operations 
without capital, so I took two expert miners in partnership with 
me, Alexander Anderson and John Whitehead. We finished 
the contract and lease some time in 1860, and I was glad to 
bring it to a close, for the superintendent began to put obstacles 
in our way, for he evidently looked on our low cost coal as an 
evidence against his method of mining. He could not say 
cheaper labor for I raised the price of mining that coal the day 
I commenced to about a dollar per ton of two thousand pounds. 
I settled up with the company. In February, 1861, I contracted 
with Mr. William P. Browne to sink a slope in the Montevallo 
seam, one hundred feet down the dip of the coal. This slope was 
the second slope sunk for steam hoisting purposes in Alabama. 

" In March, 1862, 1 entered into a written contract with Colonel 
John S. Storrs, president of the Alabama Coal Mining Company, 
to take charge of and superintend their mines for twelve months. 
In that same year, 1862, the board of directors of the company 
had a meeting in Selma, and I was called on to take my map of 
the mines and region around there, down to them and explain 
the condition of the property and underground workings. It 
was at this meeting, I was ordered by the company to meet Mr. 
William Gilmer, president of the Red Mountain Company, and 
advise him as to the best course to pursue with regard to the 
mine openings on the Helena and Conglomerate seam (now 
owned by the Tennessee Company). I advised him to pull up 
stakes and commence again on the same seams, a mile or two 
north of the Beaver Dam Creek, which he did. My responsibility 
now became largely increased. I had to take charge of three 
miles of strap iron with wood stringer railroad ; had to superin- 
tend and manage the workings of the Irish pit with its extensive 
underground workings, and keep the advance of the gangways 
and rooms measured up and mapped out by scale every month 
for the satisfaction of the stockholders whenever they chose to call 
or had a stockholders* meeting. I had to keep the shaft seam 
slope workings measured and mapped out by scale every month 
end, the same as the Montevallo seam workings. And also had 
to attend to the store twice a week. 

"When I took charge of the mines Colonel Storrs informed 
me that the opening of the shaft seam slope had run the company 
in debt $14,000. I told him that I did n't expect to be able to 
make more out of the shaft slope than the indebtedness. (This, 
Colonel Storrs told me just before he died, in 1863, was about 
paid up.) I soon discovered that the ( bottom slate' was the 
roof, and that the seam was subject to thin places. After the 
death of Colonel Storrs, General Cornelius Robinson became presi- 
dent of the company. He was succeeded by J ohn R. Kenan. T. J. 
Portis of Dallas County, George M. Figh of Montgomery, Benja- 



156 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



min B. Davis of Montgomery, and the Rev. I. T. Tichenor bought 
a controlling interest in the mines, and changed the name from 
Alabama Coal Mining Company to the Montevallo Coal Mining 
Company. Captain Portis was appointed president, M. Figh 
general superintendent, and Mr. Davis secretary and bookkeeper. 
I was appointed mining engineer for the company to do all their 
surveying underground and over, and plan out extension of the 
workings to increase the output." 

During the entire war period Joseph Squire thus mined coal 
for the Confederate Government. In later years he became closely 
associated with Aldrich and DeBardeleben in the exploration 
of the Birmingham district and he has contributed very im- 
portant information to the State Geological Survey. 



CHAPTER XII 



IRON MAKING IN WAR PERIOD 

Summary of iron making counties. Miraculous growth of industrial plants 
all over State. Hale and Murdock Furnace records of Lamar County- 
continued. Enterprises in Tuskaloosa County. Improvments made at 
Old Tannehill. Thomas Hennington Owen builds forge on Roupes 
Creek. Present day appearance of Tannehill ruins and surrounding 
country. Records of Jefferson County. Operation of Oxmoor furnaces. 
Introduction of Daniel Pratt. Establishment of Mt. Pinson Iron Works 
and Irondale plant. Biographical sketch of W. S. McElwain. His asso- 
ciation with iron making in Mississippi. A return to Oxmoor. Heroism 
of old Moses Stroup. Bibb County operations. Construction of Brier- 
field furnace. Biographical sketch of Caswell Campbell Huckabee. 
Reminiscences of S. G. Wilson. Introduction of Alexander Knowles 
Shepard. Incident of Tom L. Johnson's boyhood. Purchase of Colonel 
Huckabee's plant by Confederate Government. Estimate of Brierfield 
iron in George Peacock's report. S. G. Wilson builds forge on Six Mile 
Creek. Introduction of Giles Edwards. Association with early iron 
making in Wales, Pennsylvania, and in Tennessee. > The most important 
event in the life of " Captain" Bill Jones of Carnegie Company. Recon- 
struction of Shelby plant by Edwards. Mention of Hamilton T. Beggs. 




HERE were, as has been specified, six counties furnish- 
ing coal to the Confederate Government. This group, 
with the exception of Walker and St. Clair, also fur- 



nished pig iron. Thus the iron making counties at this period 
were nine, all told : Lamar, Tuskaloosa, Jefferson, Bibb, Shelby, 
Talladega, Calhoun, Jackson, and Cherokee. 

Late in the eighteen-fifties, and, indeed, quite up to the out- 
break of the war, there were in the State but few blast furnaces 
and one rolling mill in operation. The precise number of forges 
at work in 1860 cannot be determined, however, for many, thus 
far mentioned, faded gradually, like the Cedar Creek furnace, 
from the commercial sphere, before this decade. Now came new 
zest. Based upon the map and the geological facts set forth by 
Michael Tuomey, new blast furnaces, rolling mills, foundries, 
forges, and shops were planted. They sprang up, as it seemed, 
almost in a night. Existing old plants, whose records have al- 
ready been detailed, were improved, and in some instances enlarged 
to double their former capacity. 



158 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



The Hale and Murdock Iron Works in Lamar County at once 
entered into contract with the Confederate Government. M. A. 
Hale of Georgia, says: 

"In 1862 the erection of the new furnace began and the next 
year it was put in blast. The Confederate government took the 
larger part of its output, using the pig iron for making cannon, 
hollow ware, skillets, ovens, and pots for the soldiers' camp. 
These castings were made by dipping the molten iron direct 
from the furnace and pouring it into molds without remelting 
the pigs in a cupola. All products not sold to the Government 
were bartered or exchanged for country produce, antebellum 
prices governing the exchange. A large part of the labor used wag 
slave labor. Many of the negroes were purchased by the owner 
at the time the furnace was built, and afterwards. The skilled 
labor, machinists, etc., were detailed for duty by the Confederate 
government. As it was much safer than being at the front, there 
were always many applications for the places." 

According to Walter Nesmith of Vernon, Alabama, " This fur- 
nace contributed a good deal of material to the Confederate cause. 
It molded cannon balls, grape shot, and such like, which were used 
by the Confederate army. I might mention incidentally that the 
entire cavalry under General Forrest had their horses shot at this 
place when they made the tour through Mississippi to Corinth, 
during the year 1862-63. Now there is nothing left of the fur- 
nace except the slag and dross. An attempt was made to move 
the old boiler once. It was hauled about one half a mile, and lies 
along the public road as a monument of the old Hale and Mur- 
dock Company." 

The furnace is occasionally mentioned as the Old Winston fur- 
nace, and in some records as the Weston furnace, having been 
built by a furnaceman named Joseph Weston, employed by Hale 
and Murdock. 

According to Thomas P. Clinton, the Leach and Avery foundry, 
in Tuskaloosa County, near the town of Tuskaloosa, started 
business in the eighteen-forties, and during the Civil War cast 
a considerable amount of cannon for the Confederacy. 

The old Tannehill furnace was bought in 1863 by William 
L. Saunders and Company, of Marion, Alabama. A steam 
engine was installed and another furnace added to the plant. 
On the same creek, precisely one mile south of Tannehill, a forge 
was put up by Thomas Hennington Owen, and Thomas Lightf oot 
Williams. " Over and again, so Rose Owen tells me, they had 
to get out their ore in the morning, and besides making the iron 



IRON MAKING IN WAR PERIOD 



159 



for the government, they had to make the nails and horseshoes, 
shoe all their mules, and get the teams off to the railroad at 
Montevallo, before night." 1 Mr. Williams also ran a big tan 
yard at Tannehill, and made saddles and harness for the Con- 
federacy. The forge, being out of the way, escaped the enemy's 
eye, but was destroyed in the June freshet of 1866. Mr. Owen 
was not an iron worker himself, but a planter and merchant of 
Jefferson County, and served in the latter eighteen-seventies as 
county commissioner. He employed an expert iron worker from 
Tennessee, Thomas C. Bratton, to build and operate the forge. 

All during the war Tannehill furnace was operated, making 
cannon balls, gun barrels, ordnance, all the munitions of war, 
in addition to pots, pans, and skillets, for the use of the Confed- 
erate army. When Croxton's detachment came through Roupes 
Valley they happened upon Tannehill at the very moment when 
the cupola was being tapped and they made short work of it. 
They demolished one furnace entirely, blew up the trestle, tore 
up the tramway, burned the foundry and cast houses, and passed 
on to the settlement beyond, which they razed to the ground. 

This was the death blow. The Tannehill furnaces were put 
out of blast for good and all ; the whole country round about was 
abandoned and the forest left to its own. And the forest took ! 
It is wild almost as a virgin wilderness to-day down there. The 
old Mansion House, a short distance from the furnace, where Giles 
Edwards afterwards lived, is gone to rack and ruin. A few heaps 
of stone mark the site of the forsaken homes. The ruins of the fur- 
nace like some Welsh medieval tower stand forlorn, yet will they 
stand for centuries to come as a memorial to the early iron-masters 
of Alabama, as the mute historian of the first generation of 
the iron industry in this State. To-day there are but few men 
living who used to work about Tannehill. One is the old darkey, 
Bob Fuller, who sits around the Goethite commissary and tells 
how iron is made. There is no written record of any of the 
facts about Tannehill, and no mention whatever is made of this 
important group of furnaces in the standard authorities on iron 
making in Alabama. The Station Tannehill is the getting-off 
place for the Goethite miners now — nothing else. No hint or 
suggestion of the old furnaces, or of the early Tannehill settle- 
ment, can be seen from the railroad which cuts through the wild 
country there. 

s 1 James M. Gillespy of Birmingham. 



160 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



At the station are three section houses, a few dilapidated shacks, 
and a dirt road — the Old Furnace road — and the dingy, old 
Tannehill House, in forlorn silhouette, high on the western hill. 
The old house is as shabby and ragged looking as a beggar; 
wizened, tottering, held up apparently only by its stout old 
chimneys builded out of English brick, by Colonel Tannehill, 
long ago. Gray as a shadow it is, gloomy as a fragment of rain 
cloud flung sudden and sharp against clean sky. And yonder, 
all back from the old house, back over the hills, screened by the 
high woods and the fresh springing green where once the cotton 
grew, are the vast brown ore mines of the Tennessee and Re- 
public companies. 

"Millions and millions of dollars are in those hills/' the 
iron men say ; " and where the ground could be bought for a 
dollar an acre a few years ago, thousands of dollars can't get 
it now." Straight across big country to the coal fields they go; 
Goethite, Rickey, Standiford, ghostly Martaband, and Giles. 
The old pits and strippings of the early workers are to be seen 
to-day this side of the modern Goethite group. 

To trace the old ways through the woods and fields is almost 
as thrilling as to blaze the way into the new! The roadbed 
of the old tramway from the mines to the furnaces runs 
east a little by south, crosses the railroad track, and gets lost a 
space in the fields. Just over the yellow stream, formerly Roupes 
Creek, then Mill Creek, and now Mud Creek, it mounts again. 
It is rather like a corduroy road through Maine forests. How- 
ever, rough going as it is, it runs through as fair a country as 
the heart desires. The boughs of the trees dip low over the way, 
arching it all in green — those sweet, long, green ways! The 
old tramway follows rising ground and then quite suddenly, on 
the very crest of a sandstone ridge, it halts, and right below, like 
some castled fortress in Arthurian legend, all overwrought with 
briers and lacing vines and ferns, and locked by the everlasting 
pines, are the old stone furnaces builded by Moses Stroup. They 
are held in a hollow of Red Mountain, just where the giant range 
of the red hematite bends to the fields of his brown brother, 
on the marge of the Black Warrior's domains. Sunlight and 
shadows play hide and seek. The leaves are thick. The openings 
into the crucibles are arches, cathedral-like, pure gothic in form, 
full of grace and dark with mystery. A tall sycamore leans its 
white branches over the ruined stones. A pine tree, thirty feet 



IRON MAKING IN WAR PERIOD 161 



in height, springs from the mossy top where is a very jungle of 
weeds and wild flowers, all growing forty feet mid-air ! Sumac, 
sweet gum, and the wild muscadine creep close in from the stream 
that drove the great wheels of Tannehill years ago. And all 
around and about are fragments of old iron, pieces of broken 
gearing, blast engines, wheels, and air pipes. This machinery 
is all heavy, hand made and hand forged. Some of the pieces of 
the slag lying about are shiny and black as ebony. The old fly 
wheel is imbedded in the earth. The fallen stones are moss- 
covered. The place, from the look of it, might be centuries old. 
It is the romance of the iron-masters, and stirs one like a vision 
of old Britain time. 

It is in the war period that the county of Jefferson, to-day 
the banner county of Alabama, site of the city of Birmingham, 
and center of the coal and iron industry of the South, swings for 
the first time into the circle of the iron making counties. Be- 
cause it is the most important county in this history, it will be 
presented in some detail. Three crude iron making ventures 
were started early in the eighteen-sixties, the Red Mountain 
Iron Company Works (or the Oxmoor furnaces), owned at the 
present time by the Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company ; 
the Mt. Pinson Iron "Works, and the Cahaba Iron Works in 
Shades Yalley, near Irondale. 

Notwithstanding the mineral riches stored so deep in the hold 
of the Jones Valley region, none of the big realities of the place 
were brought to light until this war period; and then they were 
but mere forecast. With the exception of Baylis Grace's experi- 
ment and the futile efforts of early smiths to reduce Red Mountain 
ores, the mighty ridge of ore lay untouched, being considered 
" good to dye breeches, not to make iron." 

Now with Frank Gilmer's prospective railroad assured, the 
opening up of the Red Mountain country was a foregone conclu- 
sion. Moreover, included in the railroad business was the con- 
struction of a blast furnace. Colonel Gilmer selected a site in 
Shades Yalley at the foot of Shades Mountain, closely bordering 
the railroad, and but two or three miles from Graces Gap, the 
place later named Oxmoor. Finding government aid was neces- 
sary, Colonel Gilmer and John T. Milner then went up to 
Richmond. They saw Secretary of War Seddon and succeeded in 
getting a contract drawn up with the Confederate Government 

11 



162 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



" to build a railroad to Red Mountain and to erect there furnaces 
and rolling mills." 1 Thus the initial iron making enterprise 
of Jefferson County was practically a war measure. Colonel 
Gilmer and John T. Milner organized the Red Mountain Iron 
and Coal Company on their return, and Frank Gilmer's brother, 
William B. Gilmer, was elected president. The shareholders of 
both the railroad and this furnace company comprised some 
twenty-five planters and business men of Alabama and Missis- 
sippi, among whom, besides members of the Gilmer and Noble 
families of Montgomery, were B. S. Bibb, T. L. Mount, M. E. 
Pratt, and Daniel Pratt. 

Daniel Pratt and Horace Ware, whose property was then valued 
at a quarter of a million dollars, were the most successful manu- 
facturers of Alabama, at that period. Mr. Pratt had then been 
living in the State nearly thirty years, and had built up the most 
extensive cotton gin plant in the South, had founded the town of 
Prattville, and had made a fortune and a reputation for solid 
worth, dignity, practical sense, foresight, and integrity. Like 
Horace Ware, he was of New England. He was born July 26, 
1799, on a small farm in Temple, New Hampshire, and reared 
in the Puritan rigors. After a short term at school, the boy was 
apprenticed, at sixteen, to a carpenter. At twenty he set out 
for the South to make his own way, and landed in Savannah 
with nothing beyond his trade, his chest of tools, and his New 
England conscience. 

Training had bred in him the certain excellencies of order, 
system, thoroughness, and prompt, square dealing. He worked 
from dawn till dark, following his trade in various localities in 
Georgia until 1833. Shortly after his marriage to Esther Ticknor, 
also of New England, he decided to start the manufacture of 
cotton gins in Alabama. He purchased materials and two ne- 
groes and set out with his wife and the wagon outfit for the piney 
woods of the newer country. He camped in Elmore County, not 
many miles from old Ft. Jackson (old Ft. Toulouse), and here 
he built a smithy and gin shop, and started his first cotton gins. 

After a venture or two in which he prospered, the New England 
workman selected, in 1838, a permanent site for his mills and 
factories down in the piney woods and marshes of Autauga 
County, " not so much for its beauty," S. Mims says, " as for its 
pine timber." 

1 Milner's Address to Georgia Society. 



IRON MAKING IN WAR PERIOD 163 



Daniel Pratt's specific object was " to build a village dignifying 
labor in the South, and to give the laboring class not only an 
opportunity to make independent living, but to train up work- 
men who could give dignity to labor, and add to results an asset 
of the whole State." He soon transformed Autauga County. 
A negro boy of his used to say, " Marse Dan'l, he ain't no ways 
satisfied with de way de Lawd done made the earth. But he al- 
ways digging down the hills and filling up de hollows, dat 's all I 
knows." 

His town became the county seat. Pratt himself served in 
both branches of the State legislature, and came to hold high 
rank in the Masonic Order. He opposed secession, but when the 
State went with the tide, he counseled wisdom and prudence and 
preparation for the worst; he urged the building of arsenals and 
powder manufactures, the establishment of a navy, and the con- 
struction of railroads. 

From the time he started his gin business he bought homemade 
iron, and was the first large patron of the pioneer iron makers. 
Horace Ware always said Mr. Pratt was his best customer, " and 
always paid his debts." Everything Pratt used was first-class 
make. He let his timber season, he sent to England for Sheffield 
steel, and he got the bulk of his iron from the Shelby Iron Works. 
He talked and wrote about things of commercial value to the 
State. He did not acquire majority control of the Oxmoor 
property until 1872, but as a director of the South and North 
Railroad, Mr. Pratt was, as previously noted, actively interested 
in the organization of the Red Mountain Iron and Coal Company, 
which constructed the original plant. 1 

The management of this company engaged the most expert 
furnaceman then in Alabama, to build the furnaces and to act as 
superintendent. This was Moses Stroup, whose career, as builder 
of Round Mountain and of Tannehill furnaces, has already been 
alluded to, and who was, with his father, the pioneer iron maker 
and furnace builder of Georgia and the Carolinas. The same mas- 
sive and robust construction used at Tannehill was employed at 
Oxmoor. The stacks were indeed twin mates to the Tannehill 
group. 

Shortly after Moses Stroup had started work, another iron 
making enterprise, the Mt. Pinson Iron Works, was set on foot 

1 Data given by Colonel H. F. DeBardeleben of Alabama, son-in-law 
of Daniel Pratt. 



164 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



in Jefferson County, on a crude scale. A man named McGee, a 
refugee from Tennessee, came into Alabama with several slaves 
who were all trained smiths. Selecting a point on Turkey Creek, 
near Hanby's mill, a short distance from the Mt. Pinson road, 
McGee put up his little water blast forge, smith, and foundry, 
in 1862. His notion, like C. C. Huckabee's, down at Brierfield, 
was not to feed the Confederate arsenal, but to take care of the 
farmers, who were beginning to suffer for lack of tools. As a 
matter of fact, too, the field now held out fair financial induce- 
ments. As it turned out, however, McGee had to shoe so many 
horses for the Confederate army that there was little time left 
for any tool making, and the Mt. Pinson Iron Works proved little 
more than a blacksmith shop. 

In the winter of 1863 the " Old Roman 99 furnaces at Oxmoor 
went into blast, each making ten tons of charcoal iron per day. 
At the same time Frank Gilmer opened the Helena coal mines. 
Milner says: "He sent thousands of tons of coal all over the 
South, and thousands of tons of Red Mountain pig iron were 
shot away in shot and shell at Charleston and Mobile/' The 
entire output of the furnaces, " charcoal iron No. I 99 was hauled 
to Selma by one little locomotive, "Willis J. Milner," a little, 
broad gauge wood-burner, named for John T. Milner's father. 
The old South and North Railroad, boosted along by the Con- 
federate government, was a patchwork line, " every sort and kind 
of rail from 60 pounds T to 30 pounds T and strap rail and 
stringer ! 99 The old railroad men of the State grin broadly 
to-day, whenever they refer "to the old original line of the 
Louisville and Nashville in Alabama." None the less it handled 
a vast amount of freight from 1863 to 1865. 

Early in 1863 a nephew of old Daniel Hillman, Levin S. Good- 
rich, visited Oxmoor with a letter addressed to " William B. Gil- 
mer, president of the Red Mountain Iron and Coal Company, or 
to iron-masters of the Confederate States, generally." Negoti- 
ations were then pending between the company and the Confed- 
erate Government for the furnishing of a quality of iron adapted 
for the making of Parrott rifles, shot and shell. It was this Mr. 
Goodrich who eventually (1876) made Oxmoor famous as the 
first coke furnace. 

A few months after the Oxmoor furnaces went into blast an 
iron-master from Holly Springs, Mississippi, W. S. McElwain, 
took up an option on eight hundred acres of land in Shades Valley. 



IRON MAKING IN WAR PERIOD 



165 



It was an out-of-the-way location, being a few miles northeast 
of Oxmoor, and a quarter of a mile in the woods, off the stage 
road from Nashville to Montgomery, which was known as the 
Montevallo Road, and seemed to be remote from the possibility 
of Federal attack. In 1864, McElwain, backed by W. A. Jones, 
put up a stone stack, using Shades Creek for water power. He 
named the furnace and the few shacks Cahaba Iron Works, but 
the folk in the neighborhood always called the place Irondale. 

McElwain, like Daniel Pratt, Harrison Hale, Horace Ware, 
and several other iron-masters of this period, was a New England 
man. He was born at Pittsfield, Massachusetts, in 1832, and was 
brought up to the machinist trade. After a term of service in a 
gun factory in New York and in a foundry and machine shop 
at Sandusky, Ohio, the young man was urged to come South, 
through his uncle, Walter L. Goodman. Goodman was in charge 
of the construction work of the Mississippi Central Railroad, now 
a part of the Illinois Central system. At Holly Springs Mr. Mc- 
Elwain induced W. A. P. Jones and Captain E. G. Barney, su- 
perintendent of the Mississippi Central, to join him in the foundry 
business, though all that McElwain had for capital was his New 
England ingenuity and his brains. Captain Barney put into the 
concern an old locomotive boiler that he fished out of the Talla- 
hatchie River, and Mr. Jones furnished the lumber. McElwain 
fashioned a cupola out of the shell of the old boiler and a shed out 
of the timber, and began operations. 

Goodman threw work his nephew's way and it was not long 
before McElwain had a pattern shop, foundry, and blacksmith's 
shop. Within eighteen months from the time they started, the 
business had attained such proportions that they felt warranted 
in making a bid for building the iron works of the Moresque 
building, in New Orleans. They received the contract over com- 
petitors from Philadelphia, Pittsburg, Cincinnati, and New Or- 
leans. After receiving this contract they made other contracts 
in Mississippi and New Orleans. In the fall of 1860 J. H. Athey, 
formerly of Louisville, Kentucky, entered the firm, buying half 
of W. A. P. Jones' interest. The firm's name, however, remained 
the same, the parties being Jones, McElwain, Anthey, Barney, 
and Merrill. The contract work occupied all the time of the 
foundry until the spring of 1861, when the working force often 
reached two hundred men, with an all night force in addition. 

In 1861 when they were winding up their contracts they re- 



166 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



ceived proposals from the Confederate Government to turn their 
foundry into an armory for making small arms and cannons for 
the Confederate Government. They accepted the offer, $60,000 in 
Confederate money, advanced by the government. At that time 
everything wore a war-like aspect, but nothing stopped the work 
on the armory. Building material was ordered and an additional 
building, two hundred feet long, fifty feet wide, and two stories 
high, was constructed as well as a huge blacksmith shop with thirty 
forges, trip hammer, and rolls for the manufacture of gun barrels. 
Knowing that it would be useless to attempt to get gun machinery 
from Europe, McElwain and Merrill built their own machinery. 
They worked out all the patterns at home at night, and sent them 
to different foundries in the State to have them turned into 
machinery. The first gun for the Confederate service is said to 
have been made by McElwain and Merrill at Holly Springs. It 
had a rifled barrel, and during the war was struck with a ball, 
returned then to McElwain, and bored for a shot gun. 1 

The first cannon of the Confederacy were also turned out here 
at Holly Springs armory by McElwain and Merrill. They were 
made of brass, and McElwain's widow relates how, in the making 
of these first guns, she, too, used to lend a hand, pouring out the 
ladles of metal into the mold. The cannon and some of the 
small arms manufactured here were used at the battle of Shiloh 
in April, 1862. At that time the armory, with a working force of 
four to six hundred men and boys, was turning out twenty-five 
stands of arms per day and some ordnances, cannon balls, and 
shells. After the battle of Shiloh, the Confederate forces fell 
back to Tupelo, Mississippi, leaving Holly Springs practically in 
the Federal lines. 

Prior to this time General Gorgas and the secretary of war, 
hearing of the valuable machinery that Jones and McElwain 
Company had, made several ineffective overtures to them to 
purchase it in order to concentrate it all at Macon, Georgia, 
where they had a large ordnance works. "After the battle of 
Shiloh," Merrill relates, " seeing that the Confederate government 
would give us no transportation for the machinery out of the 
Federal lines, we sent our agent to Richmond to know what the 
government would give us for our machinery and stock. They 

1 This relic is to-day the property of McElwain's daughter, Mrs. H. 
J. Miller of Highland Park, Chattanooga, and is treasured as a family 
heirloom. 



IRON MAKING IN WAR PERIOD 167 



agreed to give the actual cost of the machinery and stock with 
any advance that might have occurred since we bought it." The 
sale was eventually made at a sacrifice. Some of the machinery 
was moved to Macon, Georgia, and every vestige of the Holly 
Springs works was destroyed by the Federal soldiers in a night 
raid, just after the evacuation of Corinth. McElwain, as related, 
then set up in Jefferson County, Alabama. He built a house near 
what is now Gate City, and a tram track from his red ore mine, 
the Helen Bess, opposite Woodlawn, over to his furnace, in Shades 
Valley. The new plant turned out ten tons per day of charcoal 
pig iron, all of which was shipped to Selma. 

The Oxmoor plant, under Moses Stroup's practical hand, kept 
up steadily its twenty tons per day. Mary Gordon Duff ee writes : 

"The furnaces gave employment to a large amount of skilled 
labor, and created quite a settlement of worthy people. . . . The 
surrounding country then partook much of the characteristics of 
a wilderness and was sparsely settled, since the mineral interests 
were up to that period deemed worthless, the present effort at 
manufacture an experiment, and agriculture the sole calling of 
the people of the valley. The unfinished condition of the South 
and North Railroad rendered the proper construction of these 
furnaces a herculean undertaking, and no individual or corporate 
company would have dared such an effort without government 
aid. The picturesque beauty of the location was even more strik- 
ing then than now. The sides of the hills were covered with 
luxuriant growth of native forest. The waters of the creek wound 
in silence around the mountain's base. A street climbed the 
sloping ascent, and the cottages of several families made the 
scene almost homelike. Success soon crowned their efforts and 
the works began to yield practical results while the storm of 
war beat so loud and fierce without. Confidence in the ability of 
the army of Tennessee to keep the foe in front and with no thought 
of the desperate strategic movement in its rear which was aimed 
at the heart of the South kept the work going from day to day. 
The fertile farms of the valley, till then unshorn by war's in- 
vasion, furnished an abundance of food." 

During the period from 1863 to 1865, however, the press of 
work on all the furnacemen and artisans became a thing un- 
utterable, and was as hard and relentless as service under 
Forrest himself. 

Although Moses Stroup was nearly seventy years of age by this 
time, he toiled night and day. There was a singular reserve about 
this old f urnaceman and a deep kindliness of nature and manner. 



168 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 

He had an affection for his home and his children somewhat out 
of common. Although he married late in life he had six children, 
three boys and three girls, whose mother died when they were all 
quite young. His boys all went off to the wars. The oldest boy, 
Alonzo Stroup, enlisted in a North Carolina regiment; Henry, 
the second boy, joined a North Alabama regiment; and little 
Andrew Moses, no more than sixteen years old, and the youngest 
of the family, entered a boy company mustered in in Jefferson 
County. No sooner had the Oxmoor furnaces gone into blast 
than Moses Stroup got word that Henry had been killed on the 
firing line up in Virginia. Then, without warning, the body of 
little Andrew was brought home to his father. The boy had fallen 
under the camp rigors at Selma, just as his company was making 
ready for the front. They buried the child in the old Elyton 
cemetery. No sooner was his grave covered than Moses Stroup 
got the message that the oldest boy had been shot to death just as 
Henry had been, somewhere in the marches north. 

During those hard pressed years several of the blast furnaces 
in other counties flickered, and some went out; but the Oxmoor 
furnaces kept up to the mark, steady and true, and everyone knew 
it was because " Old Man Stroup was on the job/' But a day 
came when the work was wrested even from Moses Stroup. He 
saw the destruction of Oxmoor and heard of that at Tannehill 
and in the other States. All of his handiwork thus was gone, out 
of sight and usefulness, it seemed to him forever. Yet, they say, 
that when the guns had ceased firing, old as he then was, he was 
ready to begin again, though there was nothing for him to begin 
with. His daughters gathered to him, and with them and their 
children he spent his closing years, dying near Montevallo, in 
1877. 

From Richard S. Hickman of Ensley, Alabama, a relative who 
is devoted to the old man's memory, a portrait of Moses Stroup 
has been received. It is a face that speaks. It shows how at the 
last he came to be the master of his days, and how grief opened 
to him the house of truth. As one looks upon this picture, the 
old furnaceman — the great stoic — can be seen very plainly, 
sitting at his daughter's cottage door in the evening, patiently 
and quietly, leaning on his stick, and looking out with far-seeing 
eyes upon the west, just as, indeed, centuries before him, the 
honored old men of the Indian tribes of Alabama ever watched the 
going down of the sun with eyes of the deep seer and with the 
philosophic mind. 



IRON MAKING IN WAR PERIOD 169 



The haunting sense of something strange, and big, and wide, 
and very sad, and far away is always called up to the mind by 
the history of Oxmoor, and, indeed, by the very look of the 
place to-day. Standing upon the rock where the English pilgrims 
carved the "Ode to Solitude" a hundred years ago, one looks' 
down the long valley where the stars sleep, and dreams and 
dreams. . . . 

In Bibb County, at the opening of the war period, Brighthope 
was the county's only furnace. Jonathan Newton Smith became 
interested in this plant, together with William P. Browne and 
Alexander Knowles Shepard. Early in 1861 a second furnace was 
constructed in this county by a company composed of Colonel 
C. C. Huckabee, Jonathan Newton Smith, S. G. Wilson, Gray 
Huckabee, J. D. Nance, and Huntington. Colonel Hucka- 
bee, who died in 1907, once said: "I did not start my furnace 
with the notion of making iron for the Confederate government, 
but to supply the farmers and the cotton planters, who were much 
in need of it. There was a demand from them on every side." 

Caswell Campbell Huckabee, unlike Horace Ware, was not 
"born to the iron trade." He was a planter and large slave 
owner as were his fathers before him. He was born in North 
Carolina, in 1818. After a term at the University of Alabama, 
he settled on the rich lands in and about Greensboro. Straight 
along up to the opening of the war he worked his cotton planta- 
tions, and his relations to the iron business were those of patron 
and purchaser rather than iron-master. After prospecting around 
the country with Jonathan Newton Smith, he hit on a site for his 
first plant, afterwards known as Bibb furnace or Brierfield 
furnace, and later as Strother furnaces. 

" I set all my niggers to work in the woods," said the colonel, 
"and for many a day after that, the axes sounded like thunder 
in the pines ! " His company acquired large ore holdings and 
timber lands, the nucleus of the estates owned to-day by the 
Southern Mineral Land Company. The original furnace was 
cold-blast. Some of the machinery was bought at Montgomery 
and some from Brierfield, Mississippi, where President Davis 
lived. " It was possibly this circumstance that gave the place 
its name," William Wallace McCollum says, "although other 
accounts are also told." 

Samuel Greene Wilson of Memphis, Tennessee, who served as 
manager of the Brierfield furnace, writes : 



170 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



"We secured the most skilful and efficient workmen possible, 
both in and out of the State, and in a few months were turning 
out some twenty-five tons of first-class iron a day, for which we 
found ready sale. In the course of a year, finding that wrought 
iron was more profitable than cast iron, we began looking for a 
place convenient to a railroad, for a rolling mill. We secured a 
site on Mahan Creek, the water power being used for our mills. 
We constructed a tram road from the furnace over to the mill. 
The land was a perfect network of briers and blackberries. We 
experienced so much trouble in running the tram road through 
this old field that it was suggested that we call the mills Brier- 
field. Quite a colony grew up around these mills and later the 
railroad moved the depot from Randolph to Brierfield. Not a 
great while afterwards the Confederate government secured the 
plant and made M. J. Wicks of Memphis, Tennessee, superin- 
tendent." 

Mr. Wilson had come into Alabama as a little boy, with his 
parents, in 1837, from South Carolina. On their old plantation 
in Tuskaloosa County, the town of Moundville is now located. 

In the Brierfield mill project Colonel Shepard was also associ- 
ated with Colonel Huckabee, and Richard Fell was employed to 
construct the mills. Alexander Knowles Shepard was born in 
Matthews County, Virginia, on the sixteenth day of May, 1819. 
His father was Seth Shepard, who had moved from Massachusetts, 
his native State, to Virginia, and had married there a Miss Mary 
Fontain Williams of Matthews County. The first Shepard emi- 
grant had come from the north of England, where he had married 
Thankful Knowles, and he had settled in Wilbraham, Hampden 
County, Massachusetts. After serving Virginia, as a member 
of each of her legislative houses, A. K. Shepard moved to Ala- 
bama about 1856, and settled in Dallas County. He entered 
into politics immediately upon his settlement in this State, and 
was elected to the lower house of the Alabama legislature. He 
took an active part in the exciting debates just prior to the war, on 
the side opposed to secession. When the time for fighting came, 
he ceased debating, and went to the front. After one year's cam- 
paigning in Virginia, in the artillery branch of the service, he 
was detailed back to Alabama to manufacture iron for the Con- 
federacy. He had previously been connected with the Cane Creek 
Iron Works. After the war Colonel Shepard retired to his plan- 
tation in Perry County, and subsequently took a large contract to 
build the railroad from Marion Junction to Akron. The failure 
of this road caused Colonel Shepard heavy loss. He soon moved 



IRON MAKING IN WAR PERIOD 171 



to Louisville, Kentucky, where he became engaged in street 
railway management. Here he discovered Tom L. Johnson, then 
a boy helping to support his mother by selling newspapers on 
the streets of Louisville. Colonel Shepard recognized the ability 
in this boy, who eventually became mayor of Cleveland, Ohio. 
He took him into his office, where young Johnson began his 
wonderful career as a street railway magnate, by putting up 
packages of change for the conductors. After ten years of asso- 
ciation in Louisville, Colonel Shepard and Tom Johnson pur- 
chased street railway interests in Indianapolis. Not long after 
this Colonel Shepard sold out to Mr. Johnson, and, with the Carter 
brothers, purchased the Brierfield furnace, with which he had 
been associated during the war. They operated this plant for 
some time, Shepard finally selling his interest to the Carters. 
From the year 1886, until his death in 1898, Colonel Shepard 
resided in Birmingham, Alabama. 1 

In regard to the old Brierfield works, in the eighteen-sixties, 
Mr. McCollum states: 

" The Confederate government purchased the plant from 
Messrs. Huckabee, Smith and Company, by a forced sale. Major 
Hunt was placed in charge of the works. His headquarters were 
in Selma, but his assistant commander was a Colonel Erwin, 
who was in personal command of the plant and its operation until 
the works were destroyed by the Federals." 

Concerning the sale Colonel Huckabee said : 

" I was told that I could do one of three things : Let the gov- 
ernment have all the iron I made, or either lease or sell the 
property to the government; otherwise the whole plant would 
be attached. I sold my two furnaces and mills, the whole 
plant, for six hundred thousand dollars. But it was Confed- 
erate money ! " 

The purchase of the Brierfield works was instigated by George 
Peacock's report, to which allusion has been made. Mr. Mc- 
Collum also says : 

" To George Peacock was entrusted the responsibility of select- 
ing the pig iron that was to be cast into heavy naval ordnance. 
Mr. Peacock carefully inspected the various lots of iron that had 
been furnished from different localities. So when he had inspected 

1 Information received from A. K. Shepard of Chicago, Illinois, son of 
Colonel Shepard, and Thomas S. Forbes of Birmingham, Alabama, a son- 
in-law of Colonel Shepard. 



172 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



the lot of iron from Brierfield he reported to the commander 
that the Brierfield iron was the toughest and most suitable iron 
for making guns and above any other iron in the South. Mr. 
Peacock's report went to Richmond, the seat of government, 
and as the supply of Brierfield iron was limited, the government 
seized, or what was then called pressed, the Brierfield works. 
The government then increased the force of labor and enlarged 
the capacity of the plant, adding a new hot-blast furnace. The 
entire product was appropriated for naval and military purposes 
during the remainder of the war. This connection of the Con- 
federate government with the original Brierfield works, I am 
familiar with, as I was in the service of the government, in the 
capacity of a mechanic at Selma during the entire war. The 
employment of Brierfield iron in the construction of heavy guns 
gave the iron a national reputation." 1 

S. G. Wilson writes: 

" The proceeds of my share of the sale of the iron works I in- 
vested in property on what was known as Six Mile Creek, con- 
sisting of grist and flour mills, together with a small mill and 
other fixtures situated on the road leading from Marion to 
Montevallo. I also erected a set of iron works here, converting the 
crude ore into malleable iron. To utilize all the water power, I 
added machinery and used the timber in wagon making. We took 
contracts to furnish government wagons from this native wood 
and ore. Being located on so public a thoroughfare, with the 
cavalry divisions of Generals Loring, Pillow, Forrest, and part of 
Wheeler's cavalry constantly passing, we were forced to abandon 
the usual work, and shoe horses and feed and house the soldiers. 
We kept the mills running night and day, supplying meal and 
flour to the population of a large area of country. I disposed 
of this property to Noah H. Thompson and moved to Hinds 
County, Mississippi, after the close of the war. My iron works 
were destroyed together with the other iron works of the State, 
by Federal cavalry, in 1865." 

During the war there was established in Bibb County another 
forge (at Adams Dam on the Little Cahaba), and also a nailery. 
Mr. Frank Fitch of Brierfield says : 

1 An incident related by F. M. Grace, a son of Baylis Grace, refers to 
the Brierfield plant, at the time of the sale of the iron works, just after the 
war: "On exposing the property for sale as having been owned by the 
Confederate government, Colonel Huckabee stood up and forbade the 
sale. ' On what ground? ' demanded the officer. ' On the ground that Con- 
gress has set aside the acts of the Confederate government as null and void, 
and in so doing they cannot become the lawful owners of my property.' 
A lawsuit followed which was carried through the courts by Hon. John T. 
Morgan until it reached the Supreme Court, where it was finally decided 
against Colonel Huckabee on the ground that he had used the property 
for hostility against the United States and therefore it was to be condemned 
as contraband of war." 



IRON MAKING IN WAR PERIOD 173 



" Colonel Shepard, Colonel Huckabee, and Mr. McLemore were 
connected with this nailery which was started by Jonathan Newton 
Smith, near the Little Cahaba River. An expensive and sub- 
stantial building was set upon massive stone formation. Nail- 
cutting machines of English manufacture, in large numbers, were 
procured. Every appointment was complete to begin operations, 
when Wilson's cavalry swept over Bibb and other counties, clear- 
ing smoke-houses, chicken yards, and hog pens, and destroying all 
forges, furnaces, mills, and industrial establishments. The Ca- 
haba nailery went in the common and widespread destruction. 
The dam was torn from its stone abutment and has not been 
rebuilt. Mr. Smith used the timber left from the buildings on 
his plantation, and the nailery tract of several hundred acres 
is now classed as wild lands of his estate." 

Also during the war a branch of the Selma, Rome, and Dalton 
Railroad (now the Southern) at Ashby, Bibb County, Alabama, 
was graded, and costly rock-arched culverts were put in. The 
branch ran northwestwardly about four miles, and ended at 
Four Mile Creek, a very short distance above its confluence with 
the Little Cahaba where the nailery stood. This branch was 
constructed for the purpose of utilizing the nailery, as business on 
the way, but with the more important object of touching the 
Cahaba coal field, which was only about one mile from where the 
grading ended. Judge Thomas A. Walker of Jacksonville, 
Alabama, was then president of the Selma, Rome, and Dalton, 
and he inaugurated this branch road. The grade has been re- 
surveyed in recent years. 

Just across in the neighboring county of Shelby, in the spring 
of 1862, a Welsh iron-master, Giles Edwards, was at work. To 
his labors, projects, and discoveries are traced some of the richest 
mineral holdings in Alabama, belonging now to the Tennessee 
Coal, Iron and Railroad Company, and to the Republic Iron 
and Steel Company. Three States bear witness to his handi- 
work : Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Alabama. 

Edwards was born on a small farm at Merthyr Tydvil, in Gla- 
morganshire, South Wales, September 26, 1824. 1 In the neigh- 
borhood where he spent his early boyhood there were many huge 
iron works. / 

Merthyr was then called the iron metropolis of Wales and had 
the most extensive iron works in the world. Iron had been made 

1 Information received from Mrs. Salinah Evans Edwards of Birming- 
ham, Alabama, widow of Giles Edwards; Mrs. J. W. McQueen, daughter of 
Giles Edwards; R. K. Edwards, son of Giles Edwards. 



174 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



there as far back as 1660. Near the boy's home, under the shadow 
of old medieval castles, were remains of old blast furnaces that 
were built to smelt the Roman cinder. Ships laden with ore from 
South America and Australia hailed into Cardiff, and the iron 
went forth to all the world. The entire horizon was peopled with 
shadowy furnaces, the great works of Dowlais, Cyfartha, Ply- 
. mouth, and Penydarren. 

Iron was in the boy's blood. He entered the shops at Dowlais 
and received his technical training from the Croziers. He be- 
came an expert in mechanical drawing before he was eighteen 
years old. His mother died about this time and his father 
determined to go to America. Together with Giles, Jr., he set 
sail and after more than a month's voyage, landed at Quebec, 
Canada. 

From here they went direct to Pennsylvania, to Carbondale, in 
picturesque Luzerne County. This was about 1842, ten years 
before the town was incorporated, but being so near the head of 
the Lackawanna River, it was in the very midst of the important 
coal mining district of Pennsylvania. Young Giles Edwards 
started right off at his job, made the drawings, and superintended 
the pattern making for the first mill at Carbondale. This 
was then but a crude mining settlement in the heart of a wilder- 
ness, but it was as beautiful as his native country, as the 
picturesque "Vale of Glamorgan," and here it was the young 
Welsh boy met the girl he married. 

She was little Salinah Evans, the daughter of a Welshman 
who had emigrated with his family from Cardiff. Their home 
had been at Tredegar, Monmouthshire, the very county that 
bound Glamorgan on the east. And they had come across seas 
in a vessel laden with iron, had landed in New York, and come 
straight to Carbondale. 

Selinah Evans was not more than thirteen years old when 
Giles Edwards, who was nineteen, met her. From the first he 
loved her and set to work to make a home. 

Scranton became the depot and shipping point for the product 
of the North Anthracite basin and the center of the trade in 
mining supplies, outfits, and immense shipments. The Welsh 
congregated here and helped things move along. Giles Edwards 
was one of many, but he had a strong hand in the planning and 
building of the first shops and manufactories of iron and mining 
machinery there. His good work drew the attention and interest 



IRON MAKING IN WAR PERIOD 175 



of Hopkin Thomas, father of Samuel and John Thomas, who 
later became such great factors in the iron industry of Pennsyl- 
vania and Alabama. So Giles Edwards left Scranton and went 
to work for Mr. Thomas, down into Schuylkill County, which 
was then known as " the southern coal field," and superintended 
the Thomas works at Tamaqua on the Little Schuylkill River. 
When the work of building a foundry was done there he went with 
Mr. Thomas to Catasauqua. The Thomas family was the most 
prominent family of Catasauqua. David Thomas, the " father 
of the American iron trade/' was the chief man of the village, 
and he had a library that was a treasure house for all the growing 
young iron-masters of that day. Giles Edwards worked by day, 
superintending the blast furnaces and making plans, and he 
studied by night. His health broke down and John Fritz took 
hold of him and made him quit. He had made a trial for a space 
in New York, with the Novelty Works, but had returned to Cat- 
asauqua and started at overworking again, so Fritz held him up, 
talked of a milder climate for him and persuaded him to go to 
Chattanooga. 

" I could not bear the idea of his going South at first," Mrs. 
Edwards said. " I thought he would burn up ! I thought we 
all would, but I finally agreed to it." 

This was the way in which Giles Edwards and his family came 
South, and began at Chattanooga, in June, 1859. 

Tennessee was then in the front rank of the iron producing 
States of the South. There were then over seventy-five forges 
and bloomeries, seventy-one furnaces, and four rolling mills, as 
enumerated by Leslie in '56. The Bluff furnace, to which Giles 
Edwards was assigned to remodel, had been built five years before 
by Robert Craven, James A. Whiteside, and James P. Boyce, 
for using charcoal. James Henderson of New York, manager of 
the East Tennessee Iron Company, had the plant in charge and 
had decided to make it a coke furnace. He had the limestone 
stack torn down and a new iron cupola with stack eleven feet wide 
at the boshes erected in its place, the work being planned and 
superintended by Giles Edwards. 

In his " Iron in All Ages," Swank says : 

" The new furnace was blown in in May, 1860, but owing to a 
short supply of coke the blast lasted only long enough to permit 
the production of about five hundred tons of pig iron. All the 
machinery and appointments of the furnace worked satisfactorily. 



176 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



The furnace was started on a second blast on the sixth of No- 
vember, the day of the Presidential election, but political compli- 
cations and the demoralized state of the furnace workmen were 
obstacles too great to be overcome and the furnace soon chilled 
from the last cause mentioned, and in December Mr. Henderson 
abandoned the enterprise and returned to New York." 

This was, however, the first coke furnace in Tennessee. Dur- 
ing the stay of the Edwards family in Chattanooga an event of con- 
siderable romantic interest to the iron and steel men of the coun- 
try happened in their house. The incident concerned " Captain " 
William R. Jones who afterwards became known as "the most 
important man in the Carnegie scheme." Then he was just Bill 
Jones. 

The Edwards family had known him in Catasauqua, where he 
had first come as an apprentice to the Crane Iron Company 
when only a boy in knee breeches ; he had wrecked the Catasauqua 
school house when he thought a " pal " of his had been unjustly 
punished, and had led the gang of Welsh boys in feudal strife 
against the Irish at the other end of the town. He was ever a 
fighter, but always square. 

He had met Harriet Lloyd a short time before the Edwards 
family moved South, and Harriet Lloyd was a very pretty girl. 
Her relatives were alarmed when Bill Jones loomed up as a 
suitor, and all the more because Harriet — in spite of her suitor's 
expletives and this record for scraps — liked Bill Jones right well. 

Mrs. Edwards was Mrs. Lloyd's best friend, and it was to her 
that Harriet was sent " for a long visit," with the prayer, " what- 
ever happens don't let Harriet marry Bill Jones ! " and Mrs. 
Edwards gave her sacred promise. 

Nobody thought of Bill Jones going to Chattanooga, but there 
he went, and when he could not get a job in the iron works he 
set up a saloon and a pool and billiard room, and then laid siege 
to Harriet Lloyd. Giles Edwards' good wife was in dismay. 
Every day young Bill Jones came and every day Mrs. Edwards 
said to him : 

" Promise me you will not marry Harriet." 

Young Jones was rather soft-hearted and he could not refuse 
Giles Edwards' wife, so he promised every time, but never failed 
to add: 

" Not to-day, Mrs. Edwards — I promise ; I will not marry 
Harriet to-day ! " 

A day came, however, when he avoided Mrs. Edwards, and con- 
sequently, made no promise. He had chosen his wedding day, 
and Harriet Lloyd became his wife. 

But to return to Giles Edwards. No sooner had the Bluff 
furnace been put into working order than in March, 1862, at 
the request of Judge Lapsley of Selma, whom he had met in New 
York, Mr. Edwards came into Alabama, and reconstructed the 



IRON MAKING IN WAR PERIOD 177 



Shelby Iron Works. The work at Shelby was continuous, the 
rolling mill originally built by Horace Ware being steadily and 
successfully operated all through the war. It was in 1864 that 
the plates for the armor of the ironclad ram, Tennessee, were 
rolled by the Shelby rolling mill. 

A memorandum from John E. Ware reads as follows : 

" March 18th, 1862, Horace Ware sold six-sevenths interest 
of his iron property at Shelby to John W. Lapsley, James W. 
Lapsley, John R. Kenan, Andrew T. Jones, John M. McClanahan, 
and Henry H. Ware for the sum of one hundred and fifty thousand 
dollars. This property then consisted of one charcoal blast 
furnace of eight tons daily capacity, one rolling mill of ten tons 
daily capacity, a foundry, saw mill, and six thousand acres of 
timber and mineral lands. These seven men incorporated the 
Shelby Iron Company and erected another furnace, and operated 
the works until April, 1865, when the plant was destroyed by 
Wilson's raiders." 

One of the foundrymen then employed at Shelby was Hamilton 
T. Beggs. He was born in 1830, in Liverpool, England. Like 
George Peacock, he served a steady apprenticeship as a boy, and 
came to the United States in his nineteenth year. He worked as 
a journeyman several years, following his trade in several of the 
States. Late in the eighteen-fifties he set up his own foundry at 
Chattanooga, Tennessee, and by 1861 was casting guns and 
bombshells for the Confederacy. Horace Ware then sent for 
him. Beggs worked at Shelby until the war's close, then at 
Columbiana, and in the year 1879 moved up to young Birming- 
ham. Here he built the first foundry and machine shop of that 
city. 



12 



CHAPTER XIII 



IRON MAKING IN WAR PERIOD (continued). THE FALL OP 

SELMA 

Work in Talladega, Calhoun, and Cherokee counties. Erection of Salt 
Creek Iron Works. Samuel Clabaugh manager of enterprise. Oxford 
furnace and Janney furnace built in Calhoun County. Judge Randolph's 
account of Oxford Iron Company. Part taken by old Southern Rail- 
road. Anecdotes of the war. Destruction of plants in Rousseau's 
raid. Jackson County operations. Records of Cherokee County furnaces. 
Construction of Cornwall furnace. Entrance of James Noble and his 
sons into Southern field. Biographical sketch of Mr. Noble. His early 
association with mining enterprises in England and in the United States. 
First locomotive built south of Virginia at Noble Foundry. General 
survey and summing up of all county records during Civil War. List 
of plants in operation. Estimate of Alabama's share of iron making 
during Confederacy. Selma the main objective point to the enemy. 
"Defend Selma at all costs." Description of fortifications. Formidable 
style. Physical conditions in Alabama in last days of war. Advance 
of the enemy. Forrest's attempts to ward off attack from Selma. April 
2, 1865. Disposition of Confederate forces. No men to man the guns. 
"Into the works or into the river!" The enemy before the works. 
Gun firing. Forrest's tactics versus Wilson's. One of greatest cavalry 
feats on record in Union Army. Fight to the death. 




N Talladega County, in addition to the Knight furnace and 
the various forges manufacturing iron before the war, whose 
records have already been presented, there was a second 



furnace constructed in the eighteen-sixties. Judge Miller says: 

"In December, 1863, Samuel Clabaugh and James A. Curry 
began the erection of an iron furnace on Salt Creek in Section 17, 
Township 17, Range 7, in Talladega County, on the spot where 
Jenifer furnace now stands. They built a substantial stone stack, 
a portion of which existed as late as 1893 in the stack of Jenifer 
furnace. James A. Curry was a half-brother of Honorable J abez 
L. M. Curry, statesman, diplomat, and educator, and one of Ala- 
bama's representatives in Statuary Hall in the capitol of the 
Union. Mr. Curry was, until the breaking out of the war of 
secession, a merchant of large means located in the town of 
Talladega. He was the owner of the lands on which Salt Creek 
furnace was built. Samuel Clabaugh was a brother-in-law of 
Horace Ware. He had many years of experience in connection 
with Mr. Ware, in the development and operation of the Shelby 



IRON MAKING AND THE FALL OF SELMA 179 



furnace, and was the head of the firm of Clabaugh and Curry in 
erecting and operating the furnace on Salt Creek." 

In 1881 this furnace was named Jenifer by Samuel Noble in 
honor of his mother, Jenifer Ward Noble. The Alabama Iron 
Company, in which Horace Ware was a large stockholder, op- 
erated it until it was sold to Sam Noble and Horace Ware, and 
made a part of Clifton Iron Company. It is now a part of Ala- 
bama Consolidated Coal and Iron Company. 

In Calhoun County there was but the one furnace plant prior 
to the war, which has been heretofore recorded, the Cane Creek or 
Benton Iron Works. During the war the construction of two 
more was undertaken, the Oxford furnace and the Janney furnace. 
The group known as Woodstock, built by Samuel Noble and Gen- 
eral Daniel Tyler, is not approached until the eighteen-seventies. 
The Cane Creek works furnished the Confederate Government 
with a steady output of iron right up to the day of their destruc- 
tion by General Eousseau, a year preceding Wilson's raid into the 
central counties. George B. Eandolph sends the following 
account of the two war time furnaces of Calhoun County : 

" Old Oxford furnace was owned and operated by the Oxford 
Iron Company. It was located on the west side of Furnace Hill 
in the present city of Anniston, just south of where Fifth Street 
intersects the hill, on land bought from D. P. Gunnells, of Ox- 
ford. The company comprised Judge Richard L. Campbell, presi- 
dent ; George G. Pattison, secretary and treasurer ; Fred Woodson, 
Charles Woodson, M. C. Wiley, John Weeden, William S. Knox. 

" The furnace was built in 1862, and incorporated under the 
laws of Alabama with a capital stock of twenty-four thousand 
dollars. It went into blast in April, 1863. It was a charcoal fur- 
nace of from fifteen to twenty tons daily capacity, and made a 
fine quality of iron. Its bosh was nine feet, with a stack forty- 
five feet high. The ore was taken from within a few hundred 
yards of the furnace. This old Furnace Hill contained large 
quantities of brown iron ore ; in fact, mining was carried on con- 
tinuously on this hill until this property was surveyed and sold 
for city lots. In grading the lots, and digging out the streets and 
alleys much excellent ore was found and sold to the furnaces. 
The furnace was built of rock and stone taken from the hills 
near by. 

"The company owned eight hundred and twenty-five acres 
around the furnace, besides some timber land for charcoal pur- 
poses. However, they seemed to use a free hand in cutting timber 
in those days, as they cut the timber from two hundred acres of 
land, at that time owned by the old Alabama and Tennessee Rivers 



180 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



Railroad's (now the Southern) land grant, adjoining the city of 
Anniston on the west. At that time the railroad was built to 
Blue Mountain station, its terminus being about where that 
road now passes the corporate line north. The Oxford company 
used the railroad to ship their product to Selma to the Confeder- 
ate ordnance department, where it was made into cannon, shot, 
and shell. Much of it was also used for making plates and ma- 
chinery for the Confederate ironclads built at Selma. In fact, 
the Confederate government depended mainly on Calhoun, Shelby, 
and Bibb counties for their supply of iron. 

" William J. Edmondson, still residing in the suburbs of An- 
niston, and probably the largest individual landowner in the 
city and suburbs, was the blacksmith at this old furnace, and has 
a good stock of reminiscences to relate. 

" The troopers asked some negroes, ' Who is that man running ? 9 
and were told it was the blacksmith. Their horses needed shoe- 
ing, and they needed a blacksmith, so they pursued, yelling to 
him to halt; but he outran them and made his escape to the 
mountain. However, the next morning he visited their camp at 
Blue Mountain station, and an officer brought him his horse to 
be shod. Mr. Edmondson shod the animal, and the officer was 
so pleased with the job that he gave Mr. Edmondson five dollars 
and a new hat. He spent the rest of the day shoeing horses for 
the men, who paid him at the rate of fifty cents a shoe in ' shin- 
plasters ' for his services. Mr. Edmondson says this is the first 
United States money he ever had. 

" The Oxford Iron Company was a stock company, and after 
its destruction the shares were held by many different persons, 
among them Thomas K. Ferguson, a Selma banker; Major 
Thomas Peters of Birmingham, Joseph A. Jones, now residing in 
Birmingham, Henry Clews, the New York banker, and many 
others." 

Another incident of the war is related by Robert Turner of 
Talladega County, and now eighty-one years of age. He says 
in the year 1865 he was detailed from the army to work in the 
blacksmith shop under the quartermaster at Blue Mountain 
station. There was a large depot of supplies at that point, some 
seven hundred men, and a large number of teams. The men 
were composed of convalescents, home guards, and pardoned de- 
serters, all under the command of General Hill. When the re- 
port came that Croxton's detachment was coming up the rail- 
road from Talladega, the general got his mixed forces together 
to meet the invader. Mr. Turner being the blacksmith, con- 
sidered himself a non-combatant, but went along to see the fight. 
All of General Hill's boys had heard of General Lee's surrender, 
and consequently had lost heart. Before coming in sight of the 



IRON MAKING AND THE FALL OF SELMA 181 



Federal troops they melted away. General Croxton, therefore, 
came on and destroyed the Oxford furnace. Mr. Turner had been 
instructed to gather up the teams and load the meat and other 
supplies and take them to a place of safety. These supplies con- 
sisted of tithes, gathered in from the farmers, each bringing in 
one tenth of all he produced. Mr. Turner conveyed a number of 
loaded wagons to Cane Creek Mountains, some ten miles west 
of the station, where he remained until the Federal troops left. 
He says that after destroying the furnace they moved on to Blue 
Mountain station, which was about a mile and a half north of the 
furnace. There they destroyed the railroad station, the quarter- 
master stores, and a number of cars, some of which contained 
loaded shells and other mixed ammunition. It was an awe- 
inspiring sight he witnessed from the top of the mountain, the 
names shooting up a hundred feet or more and illuminating the 
heavens. He could hear the terrible explosions too, from the 
shells in the burning cars. Much of this ordnance and ammuni- 
tion had just previously arrived from Selma, having been 
shipped to prevent its falling into the hands of General Wilson 
who had captured that city a short time before. The Oxford 
furnace lay dormant until several years after the war when Samuel 
Noble and his brothers revived the property. 

Concerning the Janney furnace, Judge Randolph writes: 

"In 1863 A. A. Janney, a foundryman of Montgomery, Ala- 
bama, was buying pig iron from the old Goode and Moore furnace 
on Cane Creek, when he was attracted to the large deposits of 
brown ore in that vicinity. He bought lands some five miles north- 
west of the Cane Creek furnace, near the present Ohatchie station 
on the Seaboard Air Line Railroad, and about two miles east of the 
Coosa River, at the old Ten Island ford. During that year he and 
his partner, Ned Lewis, started to build a furnace on land pur- 
chased from William Griffin, a farmer of that vicinity. 

" They located the site for the furnace in the southwest % of 
southwest Section 21, Township 14, south of Range 6, East. 
On the south side of an iron ore ridge they made a huge ex- 
cavation and built their furnace — or at least built the stack and 
brick chimney for stove flues. With an eleven-foot bosh and a 
stack fifty feet high they expected to make fifteen tons of charcoal 
iron daily. 

" The masonry for the furnace was quarried from the fine sand- 
stone deposits near the furnace. The top of the stack was flush 
with the top of the ridge. The iron ore, being within wheelbarrow 
distance, was gathered up and deposited near the top of the stack 
to be charged into the top of the furnace. It seems that Mr. 



182 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



Janney bought out the interest of Mr. Lewis in the enterprise. 
They intended to get their flux from the limestone deposits over 
in the ' six-foot ? valley only a few hundred yards north of the 
furnace. The furnace was built m a forest where timber was 
right at hand for charcoal purposes. The terminus of the old 
Alabama and Tennessee Eivers Railroad Company was then at 
Blue Mountain (now Anniston), some sixteen miles from the 
furnace. Mr. Janney expected to haul his product to the rail- 
road during low stage of water in the Coosa, and to use flatboats 
when the stage of water would permit it to be taken down the 
river. 

" Mr. J anney employed some two hundred negro laborers to do 
this work. They were slaves, ' refugees ? from Tennessee, brought 
from there by one Dr. Smith to keep them out of reach of the 
Federal army, then advancing through that State. 

" On the morning of July 14, 1864, General Lovell H. Rous- 
seau, U. S. A., crossed the Coosa River at the old Ten Island 
ford, and after capturing a few 'home guards,' who were trying 
to prevent his crossing, reached this furnace, and put the torch to 
the sheds and shacks of the employees and the cord wood, then 
proceeded on his raid further south. 

" Professor L. D. Miller, former superintendent of education of 
Calhoun County, Alabama, in his ' History of Alabama/ relates 
the following account of the destruction of this historic furnace : 

"'With 2,300 picked men and horse, General Rousseau left 
Decatur on July 10, 1864, and moved rapidly to the southwest 
through Somersville. He sent a detachment into the town and 
captured some needed supplies for his command. He reached 
Greensport, on the Coosa, late on the afternoon of July 13, near 
which point his rear guard was fired into by some Confederates 
and three or four men were killed or wounded. Here he sent back 
three hundred of his men who were poorly mounted. 

" ' General Rousseau learned that General Clanton was on the 
other side and would oppose his crossing the next morning. He 
secured the ferryboat after dark by means of two volunteers who 
swam the river and got it. Several hundred men then crossed 
over silently in the night. General Clanton's men, for once 
caught unaware, waited in fancied security to oppose the crossing 
next morning. They were assailed on the morning of the four- 
teenth unexpectedly, on their flank, by the Federals, who had 
thus crossed during the night, a force almost equal to their own 
numbers, and hence could make but feeble resistance to the cross- 
ing of the main body at the ford. All of General Clanton's staff 
were killed or wounded, together with several others of his com- 
mand, and the Confederates were forced to retreat in haste. 

" ' The Federals got across with small loss. The ford was the 
same crossed by General Jackson when he started from Fort 
Strother, on his way to fight the Indians at Talladega. The 
big stone dam built by the United States government at Lock No. 
2, Coosa River, is built across the old Ten Island ford.' 



IRON MAKING AND THE FALL OF SELMA 183 



" General Rousseau burned Janney 's iron works and Crow's 
iron works (both in Calhoun County) the same day, and reached 
Talladega the next day, the fourteenth. There he destroyed a lot 
of Confederate stores and burned several cars and the depot and 
contents. The latter contained the county records of Calhoun 
County, whither they had been shipped the day before for safety 
from the approaching raid. 

" There was a lot of machinery hauled from Mr. Janney's 
foundry in Montgomery, and deposited at the furnace site, where 
it remained until a few years since. It consisted of boilers, fly 
wheels, and different sizes of small wheels, shaftings and pulleys 
and stoves for the hot blast — in fact, about everything necessary 
for equipping the furnace. I am informed that Mr. Janney did 
not lose heart at General Rousseau's visit, but after the general's 
departure worked with renewed energy, and hauled much valuable 
material to his plant until the close of the war. 

" The material remained there on the ground until a few years 
ago, when, I understand, it was sold for junk or scrap. The brick 
chimney was torn down and carried away. The old stack still 
remains as a monument of the wasted energy of the builder! At 
the close of the war Mr. J anney paid off his debts, and Dr. Smith 
and his negroes returned to their old home in Tennessee. The 
Janney foundry in Montgomery continues in operation to this day, 
and the old furnace property is still owned by this firm." 

In Jackson County a blast furnace was constructed in 1861. 
Saltpeter was made here in large caves, during the war. An 
incident of interest relative to this county was that, at the out- 
break of the war, General John B. Gordon was operating coal 
mines here. But he dropped the coal business at the first shot, 
raised a company called the " Raccoon Roughs," which was en- 
listed in the Sixth Alabama, of which Gordon soon became colonel. 
Serving on General Gordon's staff was a son of Samuel G. J ones, 
now Judge Thomas G. Jones. 

In the county of Cherokee, which adjoins Calhoun on the 
north, there were three furnaces supplying iron to the Confeder- 
ate government : the old Round Mountain furnace whose records 
were given in Moses Stroup's biography ; the Rock Run furnace, 
and the Cornwall iron works. The destruction of Rock Run was 
accomplished early in the war at the time of Streight's raid. 
The stirring tale of General Forrest and the girl, Emma Sanson, 
all told over and over again by the local historians, is " glorious 
incident of this time and place." One halts a second, riding by, 
and salutes the brave girl and General Forrest. 

The Cornwall furnace was put up immediately at the out- 



184 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



break of the war by the firm of James Noble and Sons, of Rome, 
Georgia. It was a six-ton charcoal furnace, located on the Chat- 
tooga River, near Cedar Bluff, and adjacent to an ore field dis- 
covered late in the fifties by James Noble and his son, Samuel 
Noble. They named the plant after their home county in Eng- 
land. The Noble foundry in Rome, Georgia, was one of the first 
enlisted by General Gorgas to supply ordnance department needs. 
These iron works were then the most extensive in the State of 
Georgia. Back of their founding is an odd little incident linking 
them with early iron making days in Alabama. In an earlier 
chapter mention was made of the fact that Jonathan Ware and 
Edward Mahan of Bibb County sent a specimen of their best 
charcoal blooms to the Sydenham Exposition in 1851, where it 
took first prize. Now it happened that the excellent and fibrous 
quality of this iron so attracted James Noble, one among the many 
thousand sightseers, that it led to his decision to prospect through 
the Southern States of America, in search of the ore that could 
turn out that quality of iron. 1 

Mr. Noble had then had rather an extensive and unlucky ex- 
perience in Pennsylvania, to which State he had immigrated in 
1837. He was a Cornwall boy, descendant of a long line of iron 
and mining men. His father was a copper and tin mine owner, 
and he, born in Cornwall in 1805, had been brought up to the 
trade. In 1826 he married Jenifer Ward, a descendant of the 
La Hammells of France and the Brockenshires of London. Upon 
leaving England with his family for the United States, Mr. 
Noble settled at Reading, Pennsylvania, and built there a foundry 
and machine shop. He had fourteen children, twelve of whom 
(six sons and six daughters) lived to maturity and seven of 
whom survive to-day. His works at Reading were destroyed by 
both fire and freshet. When, on his return visit to the mother 
country to see the big world's fair, he ran across the southern 
brand of iron, he decided then and there to go South. The 
larger market for his foundry products had always been in 
Tennessee and North Carolina. Returning, he completed his 
inspection tour, and deciding to locate at Rome, Georgia, he 
shipped his machinery by sea, and with the help of his six boys, 
each one of whom he had trained to the business, he erected his big 
foundry and machine shops at Rome, in the summer of 1855. 

1 Data obtained from papers loaned by Miss Mary Noble of Anniston, 
Alabama, sister of Samuel Noble. 



IRON MAKING AND THE FALL OF SELMA 185 



The Nobles manufactured steam engines of a superior make 
and a great variety of other kinds of salable machinery and cast- 
ings. Prior to the war they built engines and boilers for steam- 
boats plying the Coosa Eiver. They also made a twenty-five ton 
locomotive which was the first built south of Richmond, Virginia. 
The Nobles had also, in connection with their Rome enterprise, a 
large capacity rolling mill, making all classes of merchant bar 
iron, and supplying the market in a wide territory. On their 
prospecting tours into Alabama after iron ore, particularly in 
the wilds of Cherokee, J ames Noble and his sons are said to have 
been taken by the county folk for escaped lunatics because they 
filled bags and pockets with the useless " dye rock." 

John E. Ware says : 

" The product of the Cornwall Furnace plant was consumed in 
their shops at Rome in making cannon and shot for the Confeder- 
ate government, and in the manufacture of horseshoe iron for 
the cavalry service. This furnace was destroyed in 1864 by the 
Federal forces under General Blair, and in 1865 General Sher- 
man ordered the destruction of their works in Rome, which in- 
cluded a large brick foundry, machine works, gun carriage shop, 
pattern and smith shops, and rolling mill. Before the torch was 
applied, however, Sherman took the wise precaution to save the 
very valuable machinery by dismantling and shipping it to 
Chattanooga and Nashville which were inside the Union lines. 
Immediately after the war the Nobles rebuilt their works on a 
more extensive scale and began the manufacture of railroad car 
wheels and axles, and to their rolling mill they added a large nail 
mill, making as much as one hundred kegs of nails per day." 

The account of the formation of the Woodstock Iron Company 
in Alabama, the founding of the city of Anniston, the whole story 
of the reconstruction and regeneration of the industrial life of 
the northeastern section of our State by the sons of J ames Noble 
and General Daniel Tyler and their associates, make a chapter in 
Alabama's history well worth while. 

A review of the circumstances relating to iron making during 
the Civil War has thus shown that there was a total of sixteen 
blast furnaces and six rolling mills in existence in Alabama at 
that time. The popular estimate has ever been vague. " Some 
four or five," is the way it is generally put. No complete official 
records or statistics referring to the matter have been found. 
As far as is known this table is complete. 



186 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



Blast Furnaces in Operation during the War 



Name of Furnace Plant 



County 



1. Hale and Murdock Iron Works Lamar 

2. Roupes Valley Iron Works (Tannehill) . . . Tuskaloosa 

3. Red Mountain Iron Works (Oxmoor) .... Jefferson . 

4. Cahaba Iron Works (Irondale) Jefferson . 

5. Bibb Furnace (Brierfield) Bibb . . . 

6. Brighthope (Little Cahaba Iron Works) . . . Bibb . . . 

7. Shelby Iron Works Shelby . . 

8. Knight Furnace (Chocolloco Iron Works) . . Talladega . 

9. Salt Creek Furnace (Jenifer) Talladega . 

10. Cane Creek Iron Works Calhoun 

11. Oxford Furnace . . Calhoun 

12. Janney Furnace (unfinished) Calhoun 

13. Round Mountain Furnace Cherokee . 

14 . Rock Run Furnace Cherokee . 

15. Cornwall Furnace Cherokee 

16. Jackson Furnace Jackson . . 



Tons 

(daily capacity) 



11 

20 
20 
20 
25 
12 
15 

8 
10 

8 
15 
15 
12 
14 

6 

8 



Total 219 

Alabama Rolling Mills in Service during the Confederacy 

Tons 

(daily capacity) 
10 



1. Shelby Rolling Mill 



Brierfield Rolling Mill 10 

Alabama Rolling Mill 10 



4. Selma Rolling Mill 30 

5. Saunders Rolling Mill 10 

6. Helena Rolling Mill 15 

Total 85 



This list, as will be perceived, does not comprise the numerous 
forges, bloomeries, and blacksmith shops, so frequently termed 
" iron works," whose part in the iron business up to and during 
the war period was by no means inconsiderable. The historian 
Fleming states that there is record of merely one hundred and 
fifty thousand tons of iron ore being mined from 1861 to 1865 by 
the Confederacy. But, he is careful to note, "there was prob- 
ably much more." So far as Alabama's part is concerned, the 
amount of both pig iron and merchantable bar iron turned out by 
this State during the war was annually thirty thousand tons of 
pig iron and ten thousand tons of bar iron. This estimate is 
based on the table above inserted. 

Every furnace and mill here recorded, as well as practically 
every forge and foundry in the State (excepting the Hale and 
Murdock plant in Lamar County), was destroyed in the war. 



1 Compiled with assistance of George B. 
Alabama Coal Operators Association and of 
Company. 



McCormack, president of 
Pratt Consolidated Coal 



IRON MAKING AND THE FALL OF SELMA 187 



Of the sixteen furnaces named, only six became the nucleus of 
subsequent operations : Irondale, Shelby, Brierfield, Oxmoor, Salt 
Creek, and Eock Eun furnaces. Of these there are but two in 
existence at the present date : Shelby, owned by the Shelby Iron 
Company, and Oxmoor, owned by the Tennessee Coal, Iron, and 
Eailroad Company. Each of the old plants, however, with 
scarcely an exception, pointed the way to future enterprises. 

All the resources of mine, forge, furnace, mill, shop, and foun- 
dry were pressed almost to bursting point by the tragic conflict. 
All the old ways of toil now reached their fullest expression. 
The mineral region of Alabama was outlined in light of the 
flame from the cannon's mouth; the industrial possibilities of 
the State were shouted abroad by heavy artillery, and the name of 
the city of Selma was called from end to end of the Confed- 
eracy. As the site of the great arsenal and naval foundry, 
and as the converging point for all coal, iron, lumber, quarter- 
master's and ordnance supplies for such a vast portion of the 
South, the place became, as a matter of course, one of the main 
objective points to the enemy. It was considered by the Confed- 
erate war department " the most important point in Alabama to 
defend." All through the correspondence of our officers ring the 
notes : " Look to Selma. . . . Concentrate every force at 
Selma. . . . Defend Selma at all costs. . . " 

Steps had accordingly been taken very early in the war, in fact, 
immediately following the transfer of the old Mt. Vernon Arsenal 
to the " Bluff City," to fortify the place strongly. Colonel Dan- 
ville Ledbetter, an old West Pointer, now in the Confederate 
States Army, and Captain Lernier, " an experienced engineer/' 
were assigned to the work and had under their command a large 
force of slaves. 

The fortifications were no hastily improvised rifle pits or breast- 
works, thrown up haphazard just as the enemy straddled the 
Tennessee, but were carefully designed, well ordered, and solidly 
constructed. Although not to be termed in any sense " impreg- 
nable" from a military view point, they yet presented by the 
spring of '65 an exceedingly formidable front and, if well-manned, 
promised to sustain prolonged attack of a most aggressive 
character. 

The situation of Selma, on a bluff overlooking the Alabama 
Eiver, was in itself a distinct advantage. It was completely 
protected on its southern border, and there were natural water 



188 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



defenses on both the southeastern and southwestern sides of the 
town, in the shape of two small tributaries of the Alabama, 
Beach Creek and Valley Creek. Both being miry and swampy 
at all times, in the rainy season they were literally quicksands^ 
deep, almost impassable, and altogether impracticable for mounted 
forces. The fortifications, comprising two lines of bastion forts, 
extended from the mouth of Beach Creek in a three-mile horse- 
shoe curve around the outer precincts of the city to the mouth of 
Valley Creek. Thus the place was stoutly protected on three 
sides, from river to river. Each bastioned line, a full fifteen feet 
thick at base, varied from eight to twelve feet in height. In front 
of the entire outer line which bristled with guns, a ditch was 
dug, shoulder deep and protected in its turn by a continuous 
stockade five feet high and formed of stout pine posts sharpened 
at the ends. The four heavy forts mounted with artillery com- 
pletely covered the ground over which the enemy must advance, 
a wide, open field giving a full exposure of six hundred yards. 
This rough ground, marshy in spots and bound at the far end 
by a wooden ridge, was intersected by fences and a ravine with 
quagmire bottom and would not permit any regular formation 
•excepting close up to the stockade and under the very mouth of the 
Confederate guns. 

The heavy, continuous rains of months had prevented the fin- 
ishing work on these fortifications. By late March of 1865, 
although the slaves toiled night and day, the inner line parapet 
with its two massive redoubts was unfinished, but the outer line 
parapet with its redoubts stood bold and effective. During all of 
February and March it rained about every other day. The whole 
country was flooded. Every creek and river was swollen ; bridges 
and water gaps were washed out and fords rendered treacherous. 
It was impossible to move troops, wagons, and artillery with any 
promptness or safety. The high water held men from reaching 
their commands. Sometimes one part of certain of Forrest's 
commands would be one side of a roaring river for days at a 
time, with no chance to unite until the water fell. The roads were 
execrable, and had to be bridged and corduroyed, and frequently 
new roads had to be cut. The land was stripped of all subsistence 
for man or beast. The marches killed the horses and all but killed 
the men. 

The four main roads leading into Selma — the Summerfield, the 
Range line or State road from the north, the Burnsville or River 



IRON MAKING AND THE FALL OF SELMA 189 



road from the east direct from Montgomery, and the old Cahaba 
road on the west — were trodden into gulleys by both rain and 
traffic. The Beach Creek swamp at this particular time was be- 
ginning to encroach upon new ground ; it crawled, slimy, black as 
a plague of snakes, clean across the Range Line road, and almost 
up to the boundaries of Kenan's plantation on the Summerfield 
road. As for the two creeks at the foot of the bastioned lines, 
they leaped like tigers into the huge Alabama that now, overfed, 
swollen, brown, and angry, growled by old Soapstone Bluff with 
ominous portent. If ever a spring ran mad in Alabama it was the 
spring of 1865, and every day the sky seemed darker than it was 
the day before, and the rain came down harder. 

Early in March the enemy — Thomas with the Fourth Corps — 
was reported to be advancing from the north. Alabama thus 
became closed in on three sides, — north, west, and south. One 
invading expedition was being organized at Baton Rouge and 
Vicksburg, another near Mobile, another was forming in Pensa- 
cola, and on March 22, Forrest's scouts reported that Brevet 
Major James H. Wilson, commanding the cavalry corps of the 
military division of the Mississippi, was moving into Alabama 
fourteen thousand strong. 

All through the State there were then prowling illegal organi- 
zations of cavalry, " roving bands of deserters, stragglers, horse 
thieves and robbers, consuming the substance and appropriating 
the property of citizens/' to quote Forrest's own words. The coun- 
try was being raked for conscripts, whereas, at the beginning of 
the war, the State of Alabama had responded generously to the 
call for troops. Now in these last days of conflict, there were 
no more men to send. Forrest's own troops remained loyal and 
efficient, but the State militia was then made up of old men, 
too feeble for field service, and of boys who had never shouldered 
a musket. Desertion was becoming an epidemic. " Only an 
active campaign and some brilliant success will put a stop to these 
disorders," was said by the leaders from headquarters in Virginia. 

Nathan Bedford Forrest, with a record of fight and triumph 
behind him such as the world has not yet come to realize, was 
the real leader of Alabama, Mississippi, and southern Tennessee, 
and he now mustered all his forces to ward off Wilson from 
Selma, to protect the iron works and to contest the enemy's ad- 
vance by every means in his power. Day and night in the saddle, 
already fatigued to point of collapse, his nerves on edge, rushing 



190 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



orders to Armstrong, Roddey, Chalmers, Adams, and the rest, he 
bore all handicaps stanchly. " I look for no assistance from 
State troops," he said, and he faced the State's impotence squarely. 
The very clouds of the heavens seemed in league against him. 
It was now March 30, and the enemy was approaching Jefferson 
County. The scouts reported Wilson's first, second, and fourth 
divisions under Major-General E. Upton, Brigadier-General Eli 
Long, and Brigadier-General McCook respectively, marching by 
widely divergent routes, burning the iron works and destroying 
the coal and ore operations as they marched, while all were con- 
verging upon Ely ton. By sunset of March 31, Wilson in person, 
and the divisions under Long and Upton, were on the road to 
Montevallo, the second point of concentration. Skirmish after 
skirmish followed, Forrest and all captains contesting every 
mile of the advance, but being outnumbered four to one, his 
plucky fight was of no avail. Forrest's couriers, with his final 
orders, his every plan of defense and movement to save Selma, 
fell into the hands of the enemy, and his intent to attack Wilson's 
rear was frustrated completely, while the enemy, forewarned, 
recast all plans. " Give Forrest no rest ; push him on to Selma," 
rang Wilson's command, and it was carried out by Long and 
Upton to the bitter letter. On April 1 Forrest met them in force 
at Ebenezer station, near Plantersville, in his final stand to ward 
them off from Selma. Here, charged upon by a cavalry regiment, 
he had a hand to hand encounter with a Yankee captain at lead 
of the charging troops. After a running fight two hundred yards, 
saber to saber, his opponent lay dead at his feet and the Federal 
detachment were scattering, while Forrest and his Kentuckians 
turned suddenly to meet the reinforcements of the enemy charging 
them on front and flank, in full battalion ! 

The enemy — full fed, well clothed, organized and disciplined 
— equipped for victory! Every mother's son of them had a 
brand new Spenser carbine ! Their might and their freshness — 
what contrast to his own boys, half starving, some of them, ill- 
clothed, ill-armed, — desperate ! Again overpowered — his guns 
and many of his best men captive, Nathan Forrest cut his way out 
for the road to Selma and in a little space, kind darkness covered 
his retreat. 

But the arsenal and all the iron works were doomed. Next day- 
break found Forrest coming, like a wounded wolf, down the 
Range Line road to Selma. Ah, quarry indeed! On through 



IRON MAKING AND THE FALL OF SELMA 191 



the bastioned lines he rode, and halting at headquarters of the 
departmental commander, Lieutenant- General Taylor, he reported 
the enemy at his heels. Taylor turned to the man — all covered 
with blood and mud, himself and his horse sodden and quivering 
in a bloody sweat. No, replied Forrest, quick and sharp, he was 
not wounded — not a scratch — and he pointed out that the chief 
ran risk of capture, if he stayed in Selma. When worse came to 
worst he could cut his own way out, — expected to meet up with 
his best men whom he had ordered west of the Cahaba, — but 
Taylor, Taylor had best get out while he could. 

When the forces of Selma were turned, therefore, over to his 
command, Forrest took grim survey. The " forces of Selma " — 
God save the mark ! — comprised a pack of refugees, stragglers, 
vagrants, who had come in from every part of the stricken, starved 
counties; there were also those who had escaped conscription, 
the militia, such as it was, and the artisans and mechanics 
never yet under fire. All the early plans for the stout defense of 
Selma had miscarried at the crisis. All Forrest could count on 
were his Kentuckians, and Armstrong, Roddey, Chalmers, and 
their now crippled brigades. There were guns everywhere, but 
no artillery men to man the guns. And now that he and his own 
men had come, half the militia were running off, fleeing the place, 
bag and baggage ! 

No more bitter cup in all the world's tales of the blood and 
misery of war was ever drunk by a general than Forrest drank that 
day at Selma. Out then sped his violent command that every 
man and boy in Selma, old or young, soldier or no soldier, be 
drowned in the Alabama if he would not fight. " Into the works 
or into the river " stalked that fierce order, and at point of the bay- 
onet Forrest's lieutenants drove the panic-stricken vagrants to 
the guns. Blind terror quivered in every street, shivered on the 
doorstep of every house, — dread fear of Forrest himself. 

Not a second was lost. By noon every straggler in the town 
was rounded up. Forrest then counted but three thousand men 
in all, and only one half of the number seasoned troops. The 
raw reserves he drove at the center of the vast horseshoe curve, 
facing due north and direct to the front; with his Kentuckians 
he took stand immediately at their rear, a very bull's eye of that 
vast target range. 

His strongest force and main reliance was commanded by Arm- 
strong, " the best troops in the army of the West/' although sadly 



192 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



depleted now, and Forrest stationed them on his left, on the south- 
western or Valley Creek side of the defenses. On line with them, 
but outside the works, some miles across country, were Chalmers 
and his brave fellows couchant in the Cahaba hills. At any rate, 
one more try! On cooperation between Chalmers and Arm- 
strong lay Forrest's last hope for the aggressive. 

On his right, at the southeastern or Beach Creek side of the 
works, were assigned General Roddey and his command. All 
along the lines the men stood in readiness, but the wide gaps 
between were pitiful. Never before did great guns seem so 
impotent ! 

During the hours marking the disposition of the Confederate 
forces, the sound of the dark cavalcade steadily advancing — com- 
ing as the Juggernaut — filled the air with foreboding. Now 
it was reported that Upton's division was marching in the wake 
of Long's division, down the Range Line Road. Now Long was 
crossing at double quick by flank movement to the Summerfield 
road, down which Wilson and his staff were riding. Already 
the blueeoats were hard by Kenan's plantation. Now the Con- 
federate picket was driven in, the enemy began to close in on the 
defenses. At this crisis and by Forrest's continued urging, Lieu- 
tenant- General Taylor boarded a locomotive and moved out of 
the danger zone. As the hour struck three, Long's division was 
in full force before the works; every regiment dismounted and 
Long began instantly to develop his line of battle, sharp at For- 
rest's left, and hard against Armstrong, whereupon Armstrong 
and the militia opened fire. Upton's division was marching in 
at the southeastern sweep of the works and beginning to form 
under Roddey's fire. From the parapets there could now be dis- 
cerned columns of smoke rising from the river road near Burns- 
ville, thus announcing the destruction of the railroad station, the 
bridges, and trestles, the cutting off communication with Mont- 
gomery. 

Meantime gun fire from Armstrong's line kept up sharp and 
steady, but Long's men, under cover of the slight ridge beyond 
the glacis crept silently and safely into battle formation, while 
Wilson was taking swift reconnaissance of the works. 

All at once, out of the Cahaba hills, leaped Chalmers, sharp- 
fanged on Long's rear. The enemy's picket guard, posted on 
Valley Creek, was driven in ; a stampede of the pack, stock, and 
led animals threatened; attack in force was feigned and, for a 



IRON MAKING AND THE FALL OF SELMA 193 



breathing space, demoralization of Long's ranks seemed immi- 
nent. But the hope was thwarted. Without a second's hesitation, 
waiting for no concerted action (if concerted action had been 
planned by Wilson), Long's troops rose as one man. In very 
earshot came the Federal general's cry, " Forward, men ! " And 
out of cover, cool and quick, rose the sharp, blue line at crest of 
the ridge; it advanced into the stubble field, full in the face of 
a wild storm of gun fire — Armstrong's savage crossfire of mus- 
ketry and artillery. Another second and the blue line broke. 
The charging cavalry men floundered knee-deep in the quagmire. 
Many of them, both officers and men, fell riddled with bullets, 
their breasts torn with shells. Long himself dropped, wounded. 
As he was carried off the field his colonels sprang to lead the 
charge, while high above his rear came the sudden hissing of 
artillery. 

A battery — a reinforcement unforeseen by Forrest — half con- 
cealed on the ridge, now replied to the Selma guns and supported 
the Federal charge. Four hundred yards of the glacis were 
gained. Close to the stockade the enemy formed again and in 
carbine range at last, answered the Confederate musketry fire with 
their Spensers. Then with a yell, they started on a run in a solid 
line for the works ; they scaled the stockade, uprooted the stout 
posts, leaped the ditch, and began to climb the ramparts. The first 
man atop of them — a young corporal — reeled back, shot through 
the head. In the thunder of the fire and the fog of smoke, Arm- 
strong's men held fast, clubbing the enemy back with their guns, 
hurling saber stroke on stroke at them, in hand-to-hand fight now 
to the death. A bursting shell from the unseen battery back of 
Long tore a breach in the earth works near the Summerfield road 
behind which huddled the raw reserves. The undisciplined men 
broke loose and turned in panic. Back Forrest drove them in the 
very face of the battery fire and the oncoming troops, rushing them 
to stem the breach, and ordering Eoddey to unite with Armstrong. 
But Upton was now hard upon Eoddey, and before the new align- 
ment could be made, the enemy was swarming in the breach, 
the militia was palsied, and Armstrong's men were being forced 
back upon the second line where no guns were. Not twenty-five 
minutes had passed by since Long cried " Forward," — but the 
entire outer line, all the guns, and most of the militia were in the 
hands of the enemy ! , 

Armstrong and Eoddey united now, taking solid stand upon 

13 



194 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



the inner line. On pressed the enemy, leaping the guns. The 
Fourth United States Cavalry formed for a charge of the new 
position. On they came on the gallop, with drawn sabers — the 
whole regiment riding without a quiver into a withering fire of 
musketry that broke their charge. But they rallied at the very foot 
of the bastions and dismounted. Two other regiments hurried 
to their assistance in the fast gathering dark, and all three, sup- 
ported by the scourging battery 1 that cut the breach for Long, 
now stormed the parapets, leaped down into the bastions, and cut 
into the quick of Forrest's men, while out of the swamp uprose 
the rest of Upton's troop spitting fire. All assailing the second 
line in full force, on front, overlapped Forrest on flank and rear. 
And now came the stampede. 

Night fell, black as a catafalque. Friend struck friend and 
foe struck foe in the mad dark. Forrest, Armstrong, Roddey, 
and all their men that were left formed near the saltpeter 
works for one last charge. They were surrounded again, and 
had to cut their way out toward Beach Creek swamp and get 
away by the river road. 

Over across Valley Creek, quick along the Cahaba road, and 
under cover of the dark, a long wagon train retreated, loaded 
with quartermaster's and ordnance supplies — all that was saved 
for the Confederacy out of Selma. As the teams under lead of 
Captain Huey of old Jonesboro were whipped up and rumbled 
along in the darkness, the stubble fields and clumps of woods in 
that vast level stretch of country began to glow with a savage light. 
Hour after hour, mile after mile, the red glow sped like screaming 
shells after them. At midnight they halted at the Cahaba ferry, 
and even then — ten miles away — every bush and tree stood 
etched in sharp black lines against the flaming sky that told the 
fall of Selma. The very links in the trace chains and the buckles 
on the mules' harness glittered like wild eyes. Captain Huey 
got his every team across the river in the dead of night under 
that weird light. 

The burning went on and on — and beyond that burning city 
smoked the ruins of Oxmoor, Irondale, Tannehill, Brighthope, 
Brierfield, Shelby, and all the rest — the coal and iron business 
of Alabama, quieted now, it seemed forever. 



1 Chicago Board of Trade Battery. 



CHAPTER XIV 

RESURRECTION OF THE IRON WORKS 1866-1870 

Irondale furnace in Jefferson County first plant to operate after Civil War. 
Patriotism of John T. Milner. Necessity for diversified industries driven 
home at last. W. S. McElwain and H. D. Merrill reconstruct Cahaba 
iron works. Detailed description of plant. Anecdote of "Boss" Mc- 
Elwain and little Dave Hanby. Coming of James Thomas of Pennsyl- 
vania. Abandonment of property. Present-day appearance of Iron- 
dale furnace site. Mary Gordon Duffee's experience in Shades Valley. 
Vision of old Oxmoor. Plan for reconstruction of furnaces. Daniel 
S. Troy strong advocate for iron business. Biographical sketch of 
Colonel Troy. Main events in Bibb County. Brierfield plant rebuilt. 
Organization of Canebrake Company. General Josiah Gorgas elected gen- 
eral manager. Technical description of Bibb furnaces. General Gorgas 
withdraws from iron world to take up the cause of education in the 
South. He succeeds Bishop Quintard as vice chancellor of University 
of the South. Last days of the chief of ordnance of the Confederacy. 
A return to Jones Valley. Anecdotes of the late eighteen-sixties. Early 
enthusiasts of Jones Valley: Baylis Grace, Major Peters, and John T. 
Milner. Daniel Hillman, Jr., visits region. Notes on early iron trade 
of Kentucky and Tennessee. Association of Birmingham Coal and Iron 
Company, and Republic Iron and Steel Company with old times. David 
Thomas, pioneer of anthracite iron trade in America, invests in Ala- 
bama mineral lands. First step in formation of Pioneer Mining and 
Manufacturing Company, nucleus of Alabama holdings of Republic Iron 
and Steel Company. Captain Danner's reminiscences of early coal trade. 

THE first county to get upon its feet after the great 
cannonading was Jefferson; the first furnace, that of 
the Cahaba iron works, or Irondale, in Shades Valley. 
The plants at Shelby, Brierfield, Round Mountain, and Oxmoor 
followed in successive order, and certain other iron making 
enterprises were presently inaugurated in northeast Alabama by 
the Noble brothers and several officers of the Federal army. 

Every plant in Alabama had been silenced by Wilson's hand, 
and the State's coal and iron business as well as her cotton busi- 
ness had been burned to the roots. Fully two thirds of the share- 
holders in the mining and furnace companies who survived were 
ruined in their personal circumstances. Every interest in the 
social, economical, and industrial life had been dependent upon 
an agriculture that now was paralyzed. The young men of Ala- 
bama lay in their graves. 



J 



196 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 

Hundreds upon hundreds of families, long established in the 
country, were now packing up and leaving for the West. John T. 
Milner was one of those who lifted his hand to stay the great 
exodus. " We must bring labor here that will be effective," 
he declared, " or see our State given over to unthrift, idleness, and 
weeds, as has been the case in every other country in the world 
where slave labor once formed the basis of agricultural wealth, 
and was afterward set free." He thereupon set forth the need 
for foreign immigration, pleaded again for railroad enterprise, 
advocated trade with the Gulf, and pointed out once more the 
prospective value of the mineral region. He saw Alabama as 
she was, and did not hesitate to speak the truth. His patriotism 
was not " My country, right or wrong," but rather, " My 
country, may she pluck out the roots of her disorders and 
come to stand with clear vision, clean-limbed and progres- 
sive." John T. Milner's was not the vain apostrophe to 
Alabama prevalent among certain of his colleagues: "Mother 
of sages and heroes, no stain dims your glittering escutcheon! 
Let your brow be lifted up with glad consciousness of un- 
broken pride and unsullied honor I" Rather he faced the issues 
squarely. " Go to work," he cried to prostrate Alabama. " Let 
us now devote our energies to eradicating the diseases that are 
destroying us at home." 

The wisdom of the argument that in diversified industries 
alone is builded the material force, the industrial hope, and the 
wealth of a State, was one of the lessons seared into Alabama by 
wars flame. The pioneer mining men and railroad men had 
long been saying this, but their prediction of commercial disaster, 
unless diversified industries were established, had sounded, how- 
ever, as the prophecy of a Cassandra. The ordnance department 
of the Confederacy, as has been pointed out, gave the first immense, 
practical demonstration of what could be done in the mineral 
region. 

Of the group of iron making enterprises just mentioned as 
starting immediately following the war, the account of those in 
Jefferson County will be followed by that of the Bibb County 
concerns. 

The moment Wilson's raiders quit Shades Valley, W. S. Mc- 
Elwain, owner and operator of the Cahaba iron works, went north 
on a hunt for capital to raise his furnaces. He succeeded in 
procuring funds from an Ohio firm, Crane and Breed, of Cincin- 



RESURRECTION OF IRON WORKS 1866-1870 197 



nati, and returned to J eff erson County, in November of the same 
year, 1865. He found the county officials in charge of his 
furnace ruins at Irondale, trying to protect what was left. Mr. 
McElwain's cousin, H. D. Merrill, and several other men formerly 
associated with the iron-master, now joined him. The company 
soon employed a force of five hundred men, cutting cord wood, 
burning charcoal, and starting the new works. They brought 
provisions in for many of the poverty stricken settlers of the 
valley, who were then drawing supplies at Elyton from the gov- 
ernment. Their coming was a godsend to the country. 

The new furnace went into blast early in 1866. Clothed in a 
stout, brick jacket, it stood forty feet high, was six feet wide at 
the boshes, and was lined with sandstone. It was located on the 
precise site of the former plant at the bluff's foot. The new 
tramway, fashioned of pine rails, climbed up grade to the top 
of the furnace hill; the ore loads were pulled up by mules, and 
the mine cars " or empties " rolled back to the ore dump by their 
own gravity. The furnace blast was forced by steam power, and 
the boiler, engine, and blowing cylinders were manufactured by 
McElwain on the spot. 

The blast engine, the first in the county by the way, was 150 
horse power, and the fly wheel alone weighed 36 tons. This 
engine was placed later at Woodstock in the Edwards furnace. 
Machine shop, foundry, commissary, boarding houses, employees' 
houses, negro quarters, stables, and corral were added to the 
Irondale plant. The furnace produced well. Her output was 
ten tons a day, and the quality of the iron used was good for 
small castings, domestic utensils, and for railroad use. The 
company furnished the old Selma, Rome, and Dalton Railroad 
(now a part of the Southern system) frogs, switches, and chairs 
for the rails. According to H. D. Merrill, the manufacturers got 
sixty dollars per ton for their pig iron. It was hauled by ox team, 
three or four tons to the load, down the Montevallo road to Brocks 
Gap, where it was loaded on freight cars, and was sent on down 
to Helena and Calera. The cost of labor per ton was eight dollars 
and the cost of transportation, all told, two dollars a ton. This 
was at the outset when Irondale was the sole furnace in operation, 
not only in Jefferson County, but in the entire State. 

Mr. Merrill says further : 

"When Irondale furnace went again into blast, it woke up 
the whole valley. Our Big Jim whistle, the largest whistle I 



198 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



believe that was ever made, was also the loudest. We blew it 
night and morning and it echoed far and wide. The country 
people used to flock in from right and left, and there were 
crowds watching us most of the time. All the folks I met, even 
then in 1866, had no use for red ore other than to dye their clothes 
with it. They used to be so surprised when they saw us making 
it into iron right before their eyes. They got to thinking the 
land maybe had more value than they supposed all their lives/' 

"Boss" McElwain, as he was called, had considerable origi- 
native force as well as practical sense. He dealt in an upright 
way with folk, and his word was as good as his bond. Dr. George 
Morrow of Birmingham says: "Mr. McElwain was respected 
and looked up to everywhere. Had he not been so heavily handi- 
capped, he 'd have made a great success. He had courage and 
ability and he accomplished an extraordinary amount of work, 
for which he has never, to my notion, got full credit." 

One early spring morning of 1867, Boss McElwain was rid- 
ing up the old wagon road to the furnace, astride his big, dappled 
gray. Just as he struck the bridge he heard a shrill voice 
piping, it seemed, right out of the leaves of the big Spanish 
oak there: 

" You ride a gray horse 
And 1 ride a mule: 
Beat me to Heaven 
Have to get up in the cool!'* 

Boss McElwain drew rein. "Who's there?" he called. 

A sturdy, black-haired, tough little mite of a bare-legged 
boy dropped down from the oak branch, poked his head from 
behind the tree trunk, and said: 

"Have y 9 got an extry job, Boss McElwain?" 

" What can you do ? " asked McElwain. 

" A sight of things," replied the youngster. 

"How do I know that?" The boss looked down. 

" Try me and you '11 find out quick," responded the boy. 

"What's your name?" 

"John David Hanby, Boss." 

" How old are you ? " 

" Eight year old, going on nine, Boss." 

"Come along up to the furnace, John, and we'll see what 
we have." 

Thus did John David Hanby, present superintendent of the 



RESURRECTION OF IRON WORKS 1866-1870 199 



ore mines of the Sloss-Sheffield Company, get his start in the 
iron business. He had always been more or less around a black- 
smith shop. His first recollection is of his great-grandfather, 
Andrew Jackson's own man, David Hanby, making a gun. His 
father, W. F. Hanby, after his try at the coal business, took con- 
tracts to supply a railroad camp near Helena with provisions and 
country produce. The failure of the contractor also involved 
Hanby and he went broke. His little boy, John David, who was 
born in 1858, at Mt. Pinson, at once set out to help. Having been 
drawn by the big Jim whistle over to Irondale furnace, little John 
David longed for work there, but he was afraid of Boss McElwain. 
He was so afraid of the big man that he shinned up the tree 
by the bridge when he heard the hoofs of the dappled gray. 
Hidden by the leaves, he had his say in his own quaint way, and 
won his job. 

The time came before long, however, when Boss McElwain had 
to give up the fight. One misfortune after another attacked his 
business. Funds got low, and the price of iron fell. He could 
not see his hand before him. Tuberculosis seized him. In 
October of 1872 he entered upon negotiations with James Thomas 
to sell the property. He eventually tried railroading for a few 
years and then went into the lumber business at Chattanooga, 
where he died. His name will always be remembered in the his- 
tory of the mineral development of the South. He is accounted 
among the master workmen of pioneer days as one indeed who 
had the grit and showed the way. Late in 1872, H. D. Merrill 
opened further entries at the old Ishcooda mines, later operating 
the Cornwall furnace for a time. Returning in 1880 to Jones 
Valley he became foreman at the Alice furnace, and later, pur- 
chasing agent for the Elyton Land Company. Under contract 
with the Sloss Company, eventually Mr. Merrill quarried the 
first dolomite ever used in the Birmingham district, this precise 
quality of flux being originally employed by this company. 

Concerning James Thomas, a Pennsylvanian by birth, Mary 
Gordon DufTee wrote: 

"Mr. Thomas came in the prime of early manhood, to help 
develop the mineral interests of Jones Valley when the gloom 
of war's destruction yet lingered over its fair face, and the task 
seemed hopeless. In manner he was plain and unassuming ; in 
mind, intelligent and cultured. He labored with unwearied zeal 
for the establishment and promotion of Sabbath schools and 
churches. . . . His first term of service was as superintendent 



200 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



of the Irondale furnaces, and subsequently the Eureka company 
at Oxmoor. ... It was a constant and favorite remark of Mr. 
Thomas that he believed, when fully investigated and developed, 
Jefferson County would prove to be the richest county in mineral 
deposits in the entire United States. ... It was to him all dis- 
tinguished visitors were referred, and his statistics upon the ores 
form part of the most valuable of the tabulated data on that 
important subject." 

The Irondale furnace was finally abandoned by Mr. Thomas, 
mainly on account of scarcity of timber. Together with Colonel 
Sloss he leased the Oxmoor plant in 1876. The Irondale property 
was eventually purchased by Joseph F. Johnston, one time presi- 
dent of the Sloss Company, and present United States senator 
from Alabama, and by him it was turned into a farm and orchard. 
All the machinery was sold to the Swedish sea captain, Charles 
Linn, for the Linn iron works (now owned by the Tennessee Com- 
pany), and to the Louisville and Nashville Railroad shops. The 
old " big Jim whistle," screeching to-day as loudly as ever in Bir- 
mingham, is the only echo left of the old Cahaba iron works of 
Shades Valley. 

One may visit the site of the old plant by motor flight. It 
is owned to-day by the Church brothers. "You all can't have 
been very long about these parts if y' don't know whar Church 
lives/' it is said when attempt is made to trace the already for- 
gotten trail. The car must be left on the main road — the old 
Montevallo road by the way — and one must press through 
weeds and briers shoulder-deep, scale a fence around stony pasture 
land, cross over the now bridgeless creek on a foot log and search 
for the tram track and the old wagon road. "Winding into the 
very heart of the woods it goes, leading at last to an open sunlit 
space where once the commissary stood, near the stout masonry 
abutments of the little fallen bridge. The way is strewn all 
along with bits of iron and slag, and through the interlacing 
trees, frown the ruins of the old quarters. Beyond a little winding 
of Shades Creek is another open grassy space, closed in by tall 
trees, and at the far end shadowed by the bluff and the fallen 
stacks. The old furnace is but a shapeless mass of tumbled 
brick and rock and twisted iron rods. A long-leafed yellow pine 
waves from the topmast part of the old stack where once floated 
the smoke, its plume of industry. A slender sycamore and a 
sweet-gum peep over the deep well-like cavity. Frosty hoarhound 
flowers, strings of poke berries, and festoons of wild muscadine 



RESURRECTION OF IRON WORKS 1866-1870 201 



drape it graciously, and, parting the vines, one> may see where 
the molten iron and slag have enameled the brick and stone with 
myriads of colors as though set with strange, bright jewels. Like 
Cedar Creek, Old Tannehill, Eagle, Rob Roy, Brighthope, Brier- 
field, Chocolloco, and the others, Irondale, too, has been turned 
by nature and by time into a poem. 

The other furnace plant in Shades Valley remained silent until 
the success of Irondale, during the years 1867 to 1870, at length 
brought a revival of interests to the blackened Oxmoor ruins, 
and a meeting of the directors and shareholders of the South and 
North (or Alabama Central Railroad) was held in Montgomery 
in the summer of 1871 to decide on ways and means of rebuild- 
ing the plant. 

Oxmoor remained just as the Federal raiders had left it, in the 
month of April, 1865, "a scene of loneliness and ruin," Mary 
Gordon Duffee has chronicled, "that makes my soul faint to 
recall it." Miss Duffee, a young girl at the time of the war, had, 
at Oxmoor, an experience of deep and singular pathos. She was 
in Montevallo when the invading army entered. Her brothers 
were out in the field, and her parents were sixty-five miles 
away at Blount Springs. 

"It was about set of sun," she writes, "when we heard the 
rolling of many drums and saw waving pennants and banners of 
war, and a seemingly endless column of cavalry approach the 
town. All night we waited the agony of the dawn, knowing a 
battle was imminent, as the forces of Forrest, Buf ord, and Roddey 
were on the southern outskirts. In the forenoon we heard firing 
at the depot, and a heavy skirmish began. 

" Two days afterwards with the aid of Miss Emma Bailey I 
succeeded in organizing a little band of women and children, and 
we went down the railroad as far as Brierfield to search for the 
wounded, comfort the dying, and arrange for the burial of the 
dead. Having discharged my duty I resolved to make my way 
home on foot. Starvation reigned on every hand. After a walk of 
thirty miles, begging my nourishment of hominy and buttermilk 
from the ruined and wretched people by the way, I reached Ox- 
moor at the close of one of those tenderly beautiful days typical 
of early spring in this climate. I had renewed my fainting 
strength — faint indeed from hunger and the dreary walk — with 
the hope of receiving food and shelter in the dear homes of 
Oxmoor. As I neared the familiar scene, my heart sank at the 
strange stillness of the landscape, — not a sound save the call of 
the birds as they flew from limb to limb. Here and there an old 
army horse searched for the tender young grass ; the wild honey- 



202 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



suckle threw its spray of pink tendrils against the rocks ; it was 
all so sweet and tranquil — but so overwhelmingly lonely ! At 
last I mustered courage to venture on, and found myself standing 
amid blackened ruins against the wall of the furnace tower. 
Up the hill were silent, deserted houses; not a living human 
being was in sight. The awful truth flashed upon my mind, and 
in despair too bitter for words, blinded with tears, I knelt down 
and prayed my God for courage. 

" Rising, I looked up at the summit of the high hill, whose 
sides had been utterly shorn of their timber, and I saw a com- 
fortable building with smoke issuing from the chimney. This 
seemed a sign of inhabitants and security. Wearily I climbed 
the steep and rugged path, and arriving at the gate, told them 
who I was, begged a sleeping place on their floor, and assured 
them with all due humility and politeness that I would not pre- 
sume to ask for food, only the charity of their shelter. The head 
of the family was a clever, kind gentleman, and son-in-law of 
old man Stroup, the pioneer iron maker of central Alabama, and 
the friend of my father and of my childhood. This family wel- 
comed me, acted in the most hospitable manner, and compelled 
me to share the few supplies they had managed to save. 

" Refreshed by a night of unbroken sleep, I bade these blessed 
friends adieu at an early hour and wended my solitary way to the 
wretched ruins. The morning sun shone from a cloudless sky, 
and I lingered long amid those mournful scenes; then pursued 
my journey up the street, past the silent homes, only one or two 
of which were left to greet me. On the summit I stopped to 
view the grave of a child of Mr. Haynes, a scientist. To my horror 
a wayfarer told me that stragglers from the army had broken the 
marble stones and dug into the grave in search of treasure. I 
hurried away. A couple of Southern soldiers passed me; they 
were my neighbors, and by them I sent a message to my father to 
meet me at Ely ton. Hope arose in my heart, and soon I found my- 
self at the door of Bay lis E. Grace. I wish I had words to tell 
the gracious sweetness of his voice and manner as he led me 
into the presence of his young wife, an old Tuskaloosa friend of 
my childhood ; how nobly they exerted themselves in my behalf ; 
how freely they divided their food with me; how graciously the 
day passed." 

Thus the ruins of old Oxmoor are pictured. On toward 
1870, therefore, when plans to revive the iron works were under 
consideration, there was but the site to build on. The stock- 
holders and officers and directors of the Red Mountain Iron and 
Coal Company and of the Central Railroad were mostly Mont- 
gomery men, among whom, besides Frank and William Gilmer, 
and Daniel Pratt, were A. J. Noble, R. D. Ware, M. J. Wickes, 
Cyrus Phillips, and David Clopton. This group of men was 



RESURRECTION OF IRON WORKS 1866-1870 203 



reinforced by the lawyer, Daniel Shipman Troy, whose en- 
thusiasm itself was an asset worth counting on. Colonel Troy 
had been interested in the iron making venture from the begin- 
ning, and had, in fact, through Colonel Gilmer, given to the place 
its Irish name of Oxmoor, several years before. The Troy family 
was of Welsh and Irish stock. The first one of the name to come 
across from Ireland made for North Carolina to help the patriots 
cast off the British yoke. After the Revolution, he settled in 
Columbus County, North Carolina, naming his plantation Ox- 
moor for the old country home. His son, Alexander Troy, for 
whom Troy, Alabama, was later named, served as State attorney 
of North Carolina. He married the daughter of a Welsh family, 
a young woman of exceptional education and personal force. Af- 
ter her husband's death she managed the plantation and the 
slaves, and bred her boys to the classics and to hard work. 
Daniel S. Troy was the youngest of this family of nine. In the 
midst of the spring plowing, the planting, and the wood chop- 
ping, his mother kept him and his brothers hard at Latin and 
Greek. By the time young Daniel was fifteen years old he was 
a scholar and also became manager of Oxmoor plantation. In 
his nineteenth year he set out for William Rufus King's home 
town, Cahaba, the old capital of Alabama, and began to study 
law in the office of his sister's husband, William Hunter. He 
was soon admitted to the supreme court of Alabama, married, and 
settled in Montgomery. By the year 1860, he was one of the 
foremost lawyers of the town; had served as State senator; in- 
troduced the railroad supervision law, officered the Montgomery 
water works and the Alabama Fertilizer Company, and had also 
founded a newspaper, The Montgomery Dispatch. His first wife 
died early and his second marriage was to Florence, the daughter 
of Thomas H. Watts, a governor of Alabama. 

During the war Colonel Troy had a peculiar experience. Twice 
wounded in the Virginia campaigns, while he was lieutenant- 
colonel of the Sixteenth Alabama, under Longstreet, he was left on 
the second occasion for dead, on the battle field. On the point 
of being buried alive, he was rescued by the Sisters of Charity. 
"He was then carried to Lincoln Hospital," says his nephew, 
John London of Birmingham, " and he became then a convert 
to the Roman Catholic faith." For the entire remainder of his 
life Colonel Troy was devout in a profound and remarkable 
sense. 



204 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 

Upon his return to Alabama he at once set about doing his 
part to resurrect the railroad and iron making ventures up in the 
Red Mountain region. He made a personal survey of the com- 
pany's properties, which was published in 1869, in The Alabama 
Statistical Register. The reconstruction of the Oxmoor furnaces 
was not accomplished until 1872, — after Birmingham was 
founded, — and Colonel Troy became president of the Company 
for a short term in 1876. He also served as attorney for the Ely- 
ton Land Company. Associating with him his two nephews, Alex 
Troy London and John London, he was engaged in law practice 
in Birmingham and Montgomery until his death, in the early 
eighties. 

In tracing the reconstruction of the iron works at Brierfield, 
one finds back of the enterprise Brigadier-General Josiah Gorgas. 
The property was seized as contraband of war by the United States 
government, and was sold at public auction, in January, 1866. 
Honorable Francis Strother Lyon, a nephew of George Strother 
Gaines, factor of old St. Stephens, purchased the whole outfit. 
The Canebrake Company was organized, comprising Mr. Lyon, 

General Gorgas, Colonel James Crawford, Dr. Browden, 

Glover, Prout, and Collins. General Gorgas was 

elected superintendent and general manager, and T. S. Alvis, iron- 
master. General Gorgas employed Giles Edwards, who had just 
then finished the reconstruction of the old Shelby furnace, to 
build the new Bibb plant " on the Pennsylvania standard." Mr. 
Lyon named the furnace for his mother who was Elizabeth 
Strother, close kin, by the way, to the mother of President Zachary 
Taylor, and to the Confederate officer, General Richard Taylor. 

From an article describing these iron works, and written in 
1868 by an officer of the United States Engineering Corps, 
these excerpts have been taken : 

" All of the structures are of the most substantial kind. First, 
within one hundred yards of the railroad is the large rolling mill ; 
within this there are three engines at work, one driving the 
'muck train/ and intended also to drive the 'nail plate train,' 
a second which makes bar iron, and a third which pumps water, 
cuts off iron, and a machine for making buckles for cotton ties. 
Here are eight puddling furnaces, two heating furnaces, and 
four boilers supplying steam to the engines. The boilers are 
placed by the heating furnace, and the steam is made by the 
waste heat from those furnaces. The machinery all appears to 
work well, is placed on stone foundation, and is well disposed 



RESURRECTION OF IRON WORKS 1866-1870 205 



for work. The puddling furnaces will convert sixteen gross tons 
of pig iron into muck bar in twenty-four hours, and these are 
daily converted into twenty thousand pounds of bar iron, and one 
hundred kegs of cut nails — the machinery for which is all on 
the spot, though not yet put up. 

" Passing from the rolling mill to the shops, we find a foundry 
with cupola crane, ladles, flasks, etc., fit for work of almost every 
character; a machine shop with all the necessary machinery, 
driven by an engine of forty-horse power ; a pattern shop and 
small brass foundry; a blacksmith shop; and attached to the 
machine shop is the building intended for the nailery. Around 
these are clustered offices, storehouses, spacious stables, and about 
thirty good frame dwellings, plastered and whitewashed, and 
looking very cheerful. A neat schoolhouse serves also as a church 
and for a Sunday school of about seventy scholars. 

" In full operation these works would give employment to some 
three hundred operatives. On the opposite side of the railroad 
from the shops, and about one hundred yards distant, is a lime- 
kiln, with tram road leading to a stone quarry distant about three 
hundred yards. The kiln is of the kind known as ' perpetual,' 
that is, the burning and drawing go on continuously. 

" Taking the tram road, which is substantially laid with iron, 
and going westward two and three-quarter miles, passing by the 
sawmill of the company half way out, where there are beautiful 
springs, and several dwellings, we came to the 6 Strother [late 
Bibb County] furnaces/ called after Honorable Francis ' Strother ' 
Lyons, well-known and beloved throughout the State of Alabama. 

" Here in a pretty valley amid heaps of black cinders, stand 
two brick furnaces. The hot-blast furnace looms up with draft, 
stock, hot blast, engine house, casting house, and other appur- 
tenances. Going into the engine house, up a flight of steps, you 
see a pair of large short cylinders, called i blast cylinders,' 
driven by a strong engine. These cylinders serve as the bellows 
to a fire, and supply the blast by which the ore is smelted in the 
furnace. Another flight of steps upward leads to the e bridge 
house ' at the top of the furnace. Here the ore, limestone, and 
charcoal are weighed and measured, and fed into the top of the 
furnace. The engine goes on puffing ceaselessly, day and night, 
and the feeding of the furnace at the top never ceases. Twice in 
twenty-four hours the furnace is tapped at the bottom, and the 
iron runs out into a sand bed in shapes called ' pigs,' weighing 
about one hundred pounds each. The furnace is fed daily with 
forty tons of ore, nine or ten tons of limestone, broken up small, 
and twenty-five hundred bushels of charcoal, or, if coke be used, 
twenty-five or thirty tons of that, making the large aggregate 
of about seventy-five tons of material fed in daily. This is the 
limit of the capacity of the furnace and makes some twenty-two 
tons of iron daily, as the yield is something over fifty per cent of 
the ore used. The hot gases, as they escape from the top of the 



206 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



furnace, are drawn off on one side under the boilers to make 
steam, and on the other side into the ' hot blast/ where the cold 
air, driven in by the cylinders, is heated to a temperature of about 
six hundred degrees, or to the melting point of lead. Alongside 
of this furnace stands the cold blast furnace, which has not been 
in blast since the close of the war. The hot blast furnace is forty 
feet high, eleven feet four inches in bosh (greatest diameter), 
while the cold blast is thirty-six feet high, and ten feet and six 
inches in bosh. 

" In the rear of the top of the furnace, and side by side, are four 
brick structures which look like big ovens. These are for preparing 
charcoal. Into each of them fifty cords of wood are charged, 
and produce nearly three thousand bushels of charcoal. A cord 
of wood thus produces sixty bushels of coal, while in the ordinary 
way of burning it in pits the yield is only thirty to thirty-five 
bushels. 

" Around these furnaces are collected the offices, stables, shops, 
and tenements of the company, straggling up and down in 
picturesque irregularity. The company has here a body of nearly 
seven thousand acres of land, on which there is excellent timber, 
and the ore spreads over five or six hundred acres in sufficient 
quantities to supply the furnaces for many a year to come. The 
ore is brown hematite, as at Shelby, and produces an iron of great 
strength. 

" Bituminous coal of excellent quality is found in thick veins 
within three and a half miles of the furnaces, and has been opened 
out and used to some extent. A branch railroad from Ashby sta- 
tion, one and a half miles distant, on the Alabama and Tennessee 
Rivers Railroad, is graded directly by the furnaces and up to the 
coal fields. No work has been done upon it since the close of the 
war. There is little doubt but that when this branch road is 
opened into the coal fields (and Captain Barney, agent of the 
lessee of the Alabama and Tennessee Railroad, has expressed his 
intention of completing this important feeder of his road without 
delay), it will penetrate the finest coal beds in the State. 

" The veins here attain the thickness of seven feet at a distance 
of eight miles from the junction, and Mr. Rainey of New Orleans 
has opened a vein of five feet thickness, within three and a half 
miles of the ' Strother furnaces.' . . . 

"The Brierfield region is also very accessible. The Selma, Rome, 
and Dalton Railroad, running directly by Brierfield, is open from 
Selma to Blue Mountain, a distance of one hundred and twenty- 
five miles, and is now to be completed to Rome and Dalton without 
delay. At Lime station (Calera), this road is crossed by the 
South and North Railroad, leading from Montgomery to Decatur 
— of which about twenty miles are completed and in use. 
The road penetrates the Cahaba coal fields and the rich deposits 
of red hematite of Red Mountain. Two miles below Montevallo 
and three miles above the Brierfield Iron Works, a branch road, 



RESURRECTION OF IRON WORKS 1866-1870 207 



two miles long, leads to the coal fields, where are the Montevallo, 
the Shelby, the Mobile, and the Selma mines. The last are 
worked by a company now known as the Central Mining and 
Manufacturing Company, composed chiefly of residents of Mont- 
gomery, of which Mayor C. G. Wagner is president. At Ashby 
station, forty-nine miles above Selma and two miles below Brier- 
field, a branch road is graded out four miles, and intended to reach 
the rich veins of coal lying between the Cahaba and the Little 
Cahaba rivers. Here are thousands of tons of coal already 
mined, waiting for the means to take it to market. Six miles of 
additional grading will reach the Cahaba, and one and one half 
miles more will reach coal veins five feet thick, already opened. 
Some of these veins make an excellent coke, of which a good 
deal has been used in the cupola at the Brierfield foundry." 

Under the management of General Gorgas the Bibb works 
made pig iron and cotton ties in the interest of the Canebrake 
Company until the year 1869, when the plant was leased by 
Captain Alvis and operated by him as principal manager until 
1873 when the great financial panic came on and iron went down 
so low as to make the manufacture of it unprofitable. The works 
were then closed down and remained idle until 1880. Subsequent 
operations will be detailed in a later chapter showing how four 
United States Senators — Morgan of Alabama, Plumb of Kansas, 
Morrell of Vermont, and Fair of California — became interested 
in this property. 

Brigadier-General Gorgas withdrew from the iron making 
business to accept appointment as first head master of the 
Sewanee Grammar School at Sewanee, Tennessee. From this 
time until his death he devoted his energies and interests to the 
promotion of the cause of education in the South. In 1871 he 
succeeded Bishop Quintard as vice-chancellor of the University of 
the South, whose records are so closely interwoven with the early 
history of the Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company. 
General Gorgas helped to plant Sewanee on solid rock, then, in 
1877, returned again to Alabama, to accept office of president of 
the University of Alabama. Greatly broken in health, however, 
he saw but few more years of action. He died at Tuskaloosa in 
his sixty-sixth year, honored and beloved. He was buried near 
Michael Tuomey's grave there. At the annual meeting of the 
board of trustees of the University, held at the old town, June 18, 
1883, a minute of the death of Josiah Gorgas was adopted, 
part of which reads : 



208 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



" A few weeks before the assembling of this board, a gentleman 
of distinguished character, of national reputation, of varied at- 
tainments, known in military and in civil life, and eminent in 
both, a gentleman who, when stricken with disease, was officially 
connected with the University, departed this life, and was borne 
from these classic shades to the place appointed for all living. . . . 
Suitable honors were paid his mortal remains ; faculty, students, 
and a large concourse of citizens reverently and affectionately 
assisted at the last sad rites which committed his dust to earth' 
to be commingled with the mother of us all. ... It is not neces- 
sary to epitomize the career of General Josiah Gorgas; whoever 
has read the history of the war between the States, or is con- 
versant with the events of those stirring times, knows what an 
important part he bore, and how well he discharged the great and 
important trust committed to him, and of his valuable services 
when officially connected with the University; how he brought 
order out of confusion, how he, almost imperceptibly as to the 
means employed, but most effectually as to results, established 
thorough discipline, and elevated the standard of morals and true 
manhood. 

" General Gorgas was no ordinary man. . . . Let us hope that 
though dead, he may still speak, and have a noble fruitage in 
the well-ordered lives and good citizenship of many whom he 
taught." 

A circumstance of especial interest and gratification to the 
people of Alabama was the granting in 1906 of a pension to the 
widow of General Gorgas by the Carnegie Institute. Not in any 
sense because of connection with the development work in the 
coal and iron makings of Alabama or because of General Gorgas' 
position as chief of ordnance, was the compensation accorded 
Mrs. Gorgas, but because of her own service of nearly forty years, 
as librarian and matron of the University of Alabama. Glimpses 
of her have been given in these records from time to time; first 
as a little girl in the governor's mansion at Tuskaloosa; as a 
young lady in the old house in Mobile; as a bride and mother 
in the cramped quarters of the historic Mt. Vernon Arsenal; 
then from post to post with her hubsand, until the return to 
Alabama. Wherever she has been, she has left behind her sweet 
influences. Hundreds upon hundreds of the boys and men of 
Alabama to-day call her "Mother." 

Now to tread back again to the times when the Irondale furnace 
was under construction. One runs upon the figure of a man in 
gray, " a tall, fine looking man, with blistered feet, and his uni- 
form in rags," as he has been described. He is Major Thomas 




1. Ruins of Brierfield Rolling Mills 

2. Last Relic of Iron Works of the Confederacy 

3. Old Bibb Furnaces, Brierfield, Bibb County 



RESURRECTION OF IRON WORKS 1866-1870 209 



Peters, formerly met at the arsenal in Selma. He was there 
through all the fierce battle. When the Federal soldiers marched 
out they left the industries numb, the town scorched and half in 
ruins, and the carcasses of hundreds of mules and horses rotting 
in the streets. Major Peters, full of the one idea of seeing the 
iron mountain of Jefferson County, laid his sword aside, and 
tramped across the desolate country. He reached Graces Gap, 
after many days, and Baylis Grace came out to meet him. " He 
told me he was worn out and tired and wanted to rest," writes 
Grace. "He said he had heard something about Red Mountain and 
wanted to see it. After a night's rest we went up on top of the 
mountain, and while standing on a twenty-foot bluff of red ore, 
he exclaimed, ' Here we rest/ " From that day, indeed, the major 
made his headquarters in Jones Valley. Red Mountain took him 
in thrall. He saw what he saw and he dreamed many things out 
of that vision. He and Baylis Grace became as David and Jona- 
than. Grace's home was his and all he had, for the major did 
not have one penny left. Miss Duffee records the incident of 
Major Peters' coming thus: 

" J ust after the termination of hostilities, when Rachel was 
mourning her dead and refused to be comforted ; when veterans 
who had fearlessly faced the guns of a hundred battles were 
conquered by the woe in their own homes, and saw in life nothing 
seemingly worth the struggle ; when gaunt poverty strode through 
the fenceless fields, and children were crying for bread; when 
birds found no harvests in which to build and sing ; when the meal 
ran low in the barrel and barns were empty; when even heaven 
seemed very far away, a lonely sad-faced man walked into the 
valley, and, hammer in hand, climbed wearily the sides of Red 
Mountain. And he fell a-dreaming of the times now come upon 
us. Sustained by Mr. Grace, he wrote, talked, traveled, for years, 
until he had the attention of capitalists and secured their invest- 
ments in mineral lands. . . . But the general laws of common 
sense and prudence that guided other men in their business deal- 
ings were entirely unknown to him, though honest and conscien- 
tious to the highest degree in all his acts. In person he was 
quite tall, perhaps six feet two inches; his complexion, hair, 
and eyes were dark; he had a pleasing cast of feature, and was 
a very good conversationalist, full of anecdotes and interesting 
reminiscences. But it was when engaged in his favorite topic of 
the mineral lands and their grand possibilities that he showed 
best his natural talents, and most favorably impressed, and even 
fascinated, his listeners. To this charm of manner and mind was 
added his great perseverance and force of will and action. He 



210 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



never tired, but rushed everything he undertook. In religion and 
charity he was equally as earnest and successful. . . 

R. H. Pearson also says that Major Peters had "the most 
kindly, lovable nature." Certain it was that he had a runaway 
zeal as well as a flowing tongue and pen when it came to mineral 
fields. As according to the old saying there ever stands at the 
base of a big thing the prophet, the dreamer, the visionary, so 
there now stood at the base of the Birmingham district, the first 
enthusiasts. One sees them very plainly : John T. Milner, Major 
Thomas Peters, and Baylis Earle Grace. As for James R. Powell, 
M. H. Smith, James W. Sloss, Henry F. DeBardeleben, Truman 
H. Aldrich, and their associates, they will be met in a few brief 
years, as the great pioneer builders in the period following the 
early reconstruction times. 

Colonel Sam Tate, Daniel Hillman, Jr., and Colonel Enoch 
Ensley were among the men of the time to whom Major Peters 
wrote. Sam Tate's son, Sam Tate, says that his father got so 
many letters from the major about the wonders of Jefferson 
County that he finally came down " just to find out if Peters was 
lying, or was drunk, or else had gone clean crazy." 

Daniel Hillman, Jr., was a son of old Daniel Hillman, builder 
of the Tannehill forge, whose story has already been recorded. 
Since those 1830 days young Daniel Hillman and his brothers 
had become successful iron-masters of Kentucky and Tennessee. 
In 1845 they had purchased the Tennessee rolling mills that had 
been established in Nashville in the eighteen-thirties by Robert 
Baxter, Henry Ewing, and E. D. Hicks. Steering all their ma- 
chinery up river to their furnace plants in Lyon County, Ken- 
tucky, they rebuilt the mill on a much larger scale. 

The quality of the rolled iron and the boiler plate they turned 
out became known to the trade the length and breadth of the 
country. Daniel Hillman was in charge of the celebrated mills, 
and joint owner, with his brothers, of the Fulton and Empire 
blast furnaces. He owned thousands of acres of mineral lands 
and more slaves than any other iron-master in Kentucky. The 
net profits of his iron business from 1855 to 1862 are reported 
to have amounted to $1,300,000. 

Mr. Hillman had worked at the iron trade from the time he 
was a boy. In fact, he had helped his father at the ill-fated Valley 
Forge plant. He was born near these old works, near Trenton, 
New Jersey, in 1807. After the pioneering in Ohio he settled 



RESURRECTION OF IRON WORKS 1866-1870 211 



down to steady work in Kentucky. First, at Greensupburg, he 
and his brothers assisted their father in making iron and shipping 
it by flatboat to Cincinnati. Then, in 1826, when he was in his 
nineteenth year, he managed the coaling and the office end of the 
steam furnace firm of L. S. and T. T. Shreves. Later, he went 
into partnership with William Wood in his forge and furnace plant 
on the Little Sandy River in Kentucky. While he was working 
here his good old father died at Tannehill. Then Daniel Hillman 
ventured into Tennessee. In 1833 he became a partner in the 
Cumberland Furnace Company, owned by W. A. Van Leer and 
John Sullivan. This furnace, located in Dixon County, had 
been built in 1817 by Montgomery Bell. It was the first plant 
in Tennessee to make hammered iron from pig. Several furnaces 
were built by this firm, among them Fulton furnace. 

The Hillman brothers, now combining forces, started out 
independently, with the rolling mill project. Although Daniel 
Hillman lost heavily in the war, he was still accounted a rich 
man in the early eighteen-seventies. In addition to the fact that 
his fathers last iron making venture had been in Alabama, Dan- 
iel Hillman had also become deeply interested in the mineral 
region of this State, through his friend Frank Gilmer. Colonel 
Gilmer, indeed, had once shown Mr. Hillman some of the speci- 
mens of iron ore that he had picked up on that memorable horse- 
back ride away back in 1833, over Red Mountain. Then, too, 
Sam Tate and Major Peters had written him to come and see 
the place. 

Mr. Hillman was an old man when he got his first view of Red 
Mountain along in the late eighteen-sixties, but he found the 
place what it had been said to be. He rode on horseback along 
the crest of the great iron ridge. At the point where Redding 
Mines (owned to-day by the Republic Iron and Steel Company) 
were later located, the old iron-master got off his horse to take, 
with indrawn breath, a longer look. 

" Here is the very spot," he turned to Major Peters and Colonel 
Tate, " the very spot/' he cried, u most favored for iron making 
in the world ! " 1 

Major Peters had no further trouble in making a deal. Mr. 
Hillman invested largely in both coal and iron ore lands, and re- 
turned then to his home in Kentucky. He lived but a short time 
after this. To his son, Thomas Tennessee Hillman, he bequeathed 

1 Jefferson County Record. 



212 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



his interests and his hopes in the Birmingham District. A por- 
tion of the ore mining properties Daniel Hillman purchased at 
this early date is owned to-day by the Birmingham Coal and 
Iron Company and operated under the name of Songo. 

Coincident with Daniel Hillman's visit to Jones Valley was 
that of David Thomas of Pennsylvania, "the pioneer of the 
anthracite iron trade of America." The celebrated old iron- 
master, together with his son, Samuel Thomas, and his grandson, 
Edwin Thomas, came south first at the instance of his old 
friend and fellow-countryman, Giles Edwards. At the old inn in 
Elyton, they met up with Baylis Grace, whom they employed as 
their agent. At this date (1866-1869) nothing beyond the pur- 
chase of mineral lands by Giles Edwards, near Tannehill, in the 
name of Samuel Thomas and Robert H. Sayre, was accomplished. 
But this was the first step in the making of the Old Pioneer Min- 
ing and Manufacturing Company, which was the foundation 
property of the Alabama holdings of the great Republic Iron 
and Steel Company. Operations were not begun until the 
eighteen-eighties. Another Pennsylvanian visitor of this early 
period who did much to arouse interest in the mineral region, was 
William D. Kelly, known as " Pig Iron Kelly." 

Some interesting recollections of the coal business of the State 
at this particular time have been contributed to this work by 
Captain A. C. Danner, president of the Mobile Coal Company, 
as follows: 

" About 1870 my firm was handling in a small way for domestic 
purposes Pittsburg coal which came down the Ohio and Missis- 
sippi rivers to New Orleans, where he bought it and then trans- 
ported it from there to Mobile in small schooners. There was no 
railroad at that time between Mobile and New Orleans, and that 
coal we usually retailed at from $12 to $14 per ton, when we first 
began to sell it here. We also occasionally brought over from 
England some hand-picked English Cannel lump coal, which 
we retailed here at from $20 to $23 per ton. 

" Montevallo coal was the first Alabama coal that my firm 
brought to Mobile. We have' continued handling this coal up to 
the present time, 1909. I think the price of this particular coal 
is about the same now as it was then, but there has been a great 
change in railroad freight rates. My recollection is that we paid 
the first year or two that we handled Montevallo coal $3.50 per 
ton, freight, while now the railroad rate from the same mine to 
Mobile is $1.10 per ton. The high railroad rate on this coal 
caused me to look into the matter of water transportation for it. 
I went around to Pittsburg and investigated the barge and tow- 



RESURRECTION OF IRON WORKS 1866-1870 213 



boat business there, and bought the stern-wheel towboat ' Mollie 
Gratz/ which had been used on the Ohio River for towing coal. 
I brought her round by way of the Mississippi River, New Or- 
leans, and Mississippi Sound to Mobile, and sent her with two 
barges up the Alabama River to Selma, had her loaded with 
Montevallo coal and brought back to Mobile at a cost very much 
less than the railroad would have then transported the coal for; 
but after making two or three trips with this boat I found that 
we had greatly overstocked the market, the consumption of coal 
in Mobile then being very small. 

" A year or two after this experiment with the ( Mollie Gratz ? 
I went up to Tuskaloosa and arranged to mine some coal on the 
banks of the Warrior River, the property belonging to the Ala- 
bama insane hospital. Accordingly, I employed two young Eng- 
lish miners, named Spencer, to mine this coal, and sent up a man 
from Mobile to build barges. He built several. I had them loaded 
with coal mined on the banks of the Warrior River, and held them 
there until the river rose, and then floated the barges down to 
Mobile without the aid of a towboat, having a crew on each barge, 
and letting them float down with the current. My firm brought 
down to Mobile five or six barges of coal in this way. My recol- 
lection is that we lost one barge by sinking, but we succeeded in 
bringing enough coal this way to demonstrate the feasibility of 
floating coal down by water. This was before the government 
made any improvements on the river; but we found that this 
venture, as with the one from Selma, proved that the demand 
for coal in Mobile was not sufficient to justify this business ; be- 
sides, the coal from the Warrior River was too soft and fine for 
domestic purposes. At that time there was no demand for steam 
coal in Mobile. 

" I remember that the spring following the one when we had 
brought coal down from Tuskaloosa, some of the natives living 
above Tuskaloosa built some barges, loaded them with coal, and 
floated them down to Mobile. My firm bought the coal from those 
men. Those natives, however, did not continue in the business. 
My recollection is that they were out from their homes above 
Tuskaloosa, nearly a month, floating lazily down the rivers before 
they got to Mobile. At the time alluded to above there were 
no ocean steamers coming to Mobile. All the trans-Atlantic busi- 
ness, mainly shipment of cotton to Europe, was done by sailing 
vessel, and these vessels loaded in lower Mobile Bay, some twenty- 
eight miles from the city, because there were only nine feet of 
water over the bar up to the city. There was the Morgan line of 
steamers running to New Orleans, but they burned pine wood 
altogether, as did the tugboats and other harbor craft. 

" There were no factories in Mobile then, the cotton presses 
being about the only important concerns run by steam, and they 
burned wood, needing no coal whatever. Later on the United 
States government began to deepen the water from the Gulf to 



214 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



Mobile City, soon increasing the depth to thirteen feet, and 
then to sixteen feet, and afterwards to twenty-three feet, the pres- 
ent depth. 

"With the increase of water to the city, foreign steamers, at 
first quite small ones, began to come up to the city to load, and 
with the advent of these steamers the real coal business of Mobile 
began, and has increased steadily year by year since that time 
with the increase of steamer traffic. About 1872, perhaps, my 
firm discontinued handling Pittsburg coal and foreign coal, con- 
fining itself entirely to Alabama coal, although there was very 
little of it being mined at that time, but sufficient for the demand, 
even the railroads, as a rule, running their locomotives with pine 
wood for fuel." 



CHAPTER XV 

THE FOUNDING OF A GREAT WORKSHOP TOWN, 1869-1872 

Events of South and North Railroad. " On to Nashville ! " Frank Gilmer 
again at the front. Carpet Bag legislature in control. Submersion of 
State enterprises. Crisis in railroad history. Construction work on South 
and North begun. " Build that road cheap." John T. Milner's vision 
of a city in Jones Valley. Options taken up. Agreement with John C. 
Stanton, president of Alabama and Chattanooga Railroad. Treachery 
of Stanton. Baylis Grace brings news. A great game afoot, " but the 
end is not yet," says Colonel Milner. Suspense of the moment. Josiah 
Morris takes up options for site of Milner's city. Organization of Elyton 
Land Company; articles of incorporation; election of James R. Powell 
as president. Naming of the new town. Biographical sketch of Colonel 
Powell. "His nose told on him ... he'd fight a legion of devils." 
Days of the pony express in Alabama. Pioneer transportation methods. 
Preliminaries for laying out of Elyton Land Company's city. Remi- 
niscences of Henry W. Milner. Colonel Powell's enterprise. Captain 
Charles Linn one of pioneer investors. First bank established. " Linn's 
Folly." Association of Tennessee Company property with old sea cap- 
tain's ventures. Major Willis Milner appointed officer in Elyton Land 
Company. Giles Edwards passes through Jones Valley. The city in the 
corn fields. How " the old co'thouse " was wrested from Elyton. Sketch 
of Robert H. Henley, first mayor of city. Colonel Powell's startling 
methods. Building of the Old Relay House. Introduction B. F. Roden, 
R. H. Pearson, and Frank P. O'Brien. 




take up again the thread of the South and North 
Railroad history, broken for the time by war and 
all its sorrows, it is seen that it now becomes closely 



knit and interwoven with every circumstance and incident of 
Jefferson County. And very soon, indeed, the biggest piece of 
business which has yet been chronicled in these pages comes to 
pass. It seems that the first legislature convening after the 
war, passed a State aid law, the main object of which was the 
building up of the mineral interests of Alabama. Colonel Gilmer 
came at once to the rescue of the South and North Railroad. 
" His millions were gone," says Milner, " and Frank Gilmer was 
a poor man, but before the hot embers of his grand conception 
in Jefferson County had cooled, men were at work securing and 
saving what was left. Collecting his scattered forces and un- 
furling his standard with his watchward e On to Nashville/ Frank 



216 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



Gilmer again began the work of reconstruction. Though our 
strong men had gone to the wall, and our stockholders could not 
pay, a few of us kept our chartered interest alive." The first foot- 
hold was thus kept. But when the reconstruction laws of the 
Federal Congress were passed, in February, 1867, the ground 
became quicksand. 

The Carpet Bag legislature appeared at the capitol at Mont- 
gomery, in June, 1868, and John C. Stanton, of Boston, with it. 
" Stanton was a hard-looking Scotchy fellow," observed Kevin 
St. Michael Cunningham, " a red-headed, hustling rascal." 

According to Milner this Stanton controlled, the legislature 
in so far as railroad affairs were concerned, " as if he owned 
every member, body and soul. He secured the gift of all that 
had been done by our people in grading the road from Meridian 
to Chattanooga. He wanted more and he got it from the 
legislature." Frank Gilmer and his associates went under. 
Stanton and his crowd were on top. " No one knew what would 
come next," says Milner. " The blight was on everything ex- 
cept the souls of our people, and the soil we lived on." 

John Whiting, a Montgomery cotton factor, was made presi- 
dent of the South and North Railroad, displacing Gilmer. " I 
was still the engineer, so called," said Milner. " The Central 
had a mortgage on the Alabama and Chattanooga Railroad, but 
it was in the name of the State. I soon saw that Stanton, by a 
single wave of his hand, could do away with that mortgage, 
and all others, of which we were the beneficiaries, under the 
Act of 1859-60. I told Mr. Whiting he had better watch these 
matters of legislation. He spurned the idea of getting among 
these Yankees at all, much less of paying them for their votes, 
but he said I might do so if I felt like it. I had then been en- 
gaged in the work of building this railroad for over ten years, 
and my heart and soul were in it. So I went." 

John T. Milner thus saved the State's appropriation for his rail- 
road. While the young engineer was at the capitol, Stanton pro- 
posed to turn the course of the line as located by Milner, and go no 
further than Elyton, and there make connection straight for Chat- 
tanooga. The idea struck Whiting as an excellent one — for cot- 
ton. Montgomery, then, as now, was in the main a cotton market. 
She would by this arrangement get a competing commercial line 
to New York. As for any mineral regions in Alabama, "the 
thing was mainly talk after all. Alabama was a cotton State." 



FOUNDING GREAT WORKSHOP TOWN, 1869-1872 217 

John T. Milner' s temper got up. " I saw at once," he relates, 
" that this meant the ruin of our great railroad enterprise forever, 
and the transfer of everything to Chattanooga, an irretrievable 
loss to Alabama." He went to E. C. Hannon, the one man in 
Montgomery who had influence with Whiting. Mr. Hannon was 
a Georgian, and a good square sort, with sound judgment. With 
Milner he saw the danger, and turned in at once to try to avert 
it. But Whiting was stubborn. He wanted what was good for 
cotton. " The matter went far enough," said Milner, " to require 
me to turn over all the profiles and maps I had made to Stanton's 
chief engineer, Major R. C. McCalla." 

A halt for the moment was called on the proceeding by Whit- 
ing's receiving another proposition from Williard Warner, also 
good for cotton. He went up to Washington, reflecting over the 
two, and died there quite suddenly, without ever coming to a 
decision. 

A meeting of the directors of the railroad was called in Mont- 
gomery the following week. Milner writes : " Suddenly and 
without premonition, Frank Gilmer — this ghost of a man who 
was thought to be forever lost — appeared at the board in No- 
vember, 1869, with proxies for a majority of the stock in his 
hand! The scenes at the feast of Belshazzar most fitly describe 
what happened in that room when this revelation was made. Gil- 
mer was again elected president." The men went fairly beside 
themselves. 

The little construction work that had been accomplished during 
the war consisting of strap rail and stringers, was all but oblit- 
erated. The South and North was no more than a scent up 
through the pines to the borders of the Hill Country. Milner 
and his associate engineers, among whom were his cousin, John 
A. Milner, and also N. W. Long, J. T. Elmore, and R. B. Harris, 
with the railroad contractors in their wake, then began construc- 
tion work. 

"According to the terms of the contract of April 12, 1869, 
Sam Tate agreed to furnish all the material of every character, 
to construct the entire road from Montgomery to Decatur, ac- 
cording to the plans, lines, and grades designed in Milner's re- 
port of November 24, 1866. He agreed to deliver the road, fully 
equipped with rolling stock, machine shops, roundhouses, de- 
pots, section houses, water stations, etc., and he stipulated to 
finish said road from Calera to Elyton by April 1, 1871, and to 
Decatur by December of that same year, all for the sum of 



218 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



$5,014,220, the three and eight per cent bonds indorsed by the 
State to the extent of $16,000 dollars per mile." 1 

Under orders to build that road as cheaply as a railroad could 
be built, " and more cheaply if possible/ 7 the engineers made long 
detours, climbed hills, and wound in rattlesnake curves, avoiding 
all tunneling, trestle-making, expressive grading, anything, 
everything, to save money. For the treasury was lean indeed. 
Milner would come back from Montgomery saying, according 
to his son, " More curves, more curves, more stiff grade." And 
he and his engineers stood for it as best they could. It cost the 
Louisville and Nashville Railroad a fortune, in later years, under 
M. H. Smith's lead, to undo this railroad work ordained by an 
enthusiastic but short-sighted and poverty-ridden company. 

Only Sam Tate and John T. Milner and his engineers foresaw 
the freight that road was destined to carry, and how the burdened 
trains would have to labor and struggle and burn good money in 
after time. John T. Milner's wife, who, by the way, was the 
daughter of John C. Caldwell, knew a great deal about engineer- 
ing. She used to say as she looked over the loops and the stiff 
grades, " Well, that was not the way my husband planned it, nor 
the way he wanted it. It was the way he just had to make it." 

Construction work had not been long under way when John 
T. Milner proposed to Stanton, as president of the Alabama and 
Chattanooga (now the Alabama Great Southern), that they buy 
jointly, in behalf of their respective companies, a big tract of land 
at the point their railroads should cross, for the purpose of found- 
ing an industrial city. 

This idea of some big workshop town at the heart of the mineral 
region to become of permanent use and value to Alabama had 
been stirring in John T. Milner's mind for years. He did not 
see why it could not be. He and Sam Tate used to talk it over 
together in the camp, of nights, smoking pipes around the fire 
beyond their tents under the long-leaf pines. 

Just as the vision of a railroad through the iron and coal regions 
had haunted Frank Gilmer, asleep or waking, so now the dream 
of a great city stood insistent before John T. Milner and gave him 
no rest. Years before he had seen just the place for it, when he 
had ridden along the crest line of Red Mountain. It was on ris- 
ing ground in the long valley, near a place of many springs; a 

1 Tate contract loaned by M. H. Smith, president of Louisville and 
Nashville Railroad. 



FOUNDING GREAT WORKSHOP TOWN, 1869-1872 219 



happy, comfortable farming life, giving light and motion to the 
green world lying in and around the village of Ely ton. 

The Alabama and Chattanooga directors had at one time con- 
sidered making a town at Oxmoor, but Stanton at length favored 
Milner's proposition. An agreement was drawn up between the 
two men, signed and sealed. In his mind's eye, J ohn Milner saw 
his city rise up in the woods of Jones Valley and take form and 
shape. 1 He got the precise site he wanted. With Stanton's 
chief engineer, he took up options on nearly seven thousand acres 
of ground in Jones Valley, near a stream called Village Creek. 
There were fifty-three springs on the tract, and the engineers 
located a canal into which Village Creek could be diverted, and 
therefore got the first necessities for a town, — water facilities 
and perfect drainage. When the options were all secured and the 
site was surveyed the engineers located both roads to Village Creek 
and construction began. They moved the camp up to Alfred Roe- 
buck's place, and for the next few weeks were hard at it staking 
out the boundaries, the section lines, streets, and blocks. 

At daybreak, one morning in April, when Milner and McCalla 
were just about turning out of their tent, Baylis Grace rode up 
to Roebuck's with news. He said construction work on the Ala- 
bama and Chattanooga had been stopped over McCalla's head 
by Stanton's orders ; that the line was being run towards Elyton 
instead, and that Stanton had taken up options on all the farm 
land in Jones Valley near and around Elyton, and had backed 
out of the Village Creek agreement, together with all the directors 
of the Alabama and Chattanooga. 

The news came sudden and sharp as a pistol shot. John 
T. Milner seldom became angry. When he did he turned sheet 
white, and never uttered a word. Major McCalla, too, was 
dumfounded. Grace turned to Milner. Speaking of it years 
afterward, Milner said, " He asked me what it meant, anyhow. 
I did not have anything to say. The infamy of the thing paralyzed 
me for the moment." 

Major Tom Peters came galloping up just then with two or 
three others. They were all up in the air over the thing. " The 
options Stanton had taken," some one said, " were for sixty days, 
payable at Montgomery." John T. Milner glanced up. Captain 

1 H He had always a rather curious and remarkable dream sense," his 
young granddaughter, Bessie Milner, says; "he could visualize strangely, 
and see things in the dark." 



220 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



Alburto Martin at that moment rode into camp and dismounted. 
All had heard of it by " farm telegraphy." 

But Milner and McCalla did not discuss the matter. They 
could not give entire credence to the thing without some notice 
from headquarters. Both engineers dropped a line to Chattanooga 
requesting information, and protesting against the change. Then 
they took up their day's work again and went on platting out the 
city at Village Creek. 

A week went by with no answer. There never was any answer, 
nor indeed, was there need of one. The facts themselves spoke. 
It was a shrewd business trick by which the directors and stock- 
holders of the South and North Railroad were knocked out of 
any share or chance of share in the lots of the projected city ; the 
directors and shareholders of the Alabama and Chattanooga had 
the whole thing and would own the town. The South and North 
was marked out for defeat and bankruptcy. It was a great game 
but the end was not yet. 

The Montgomery end of the road was at its wits' end. What 
to do, neither Colonel Gilmer, nor Daniel Pratt, nor any man of 
the company could advise. Milner shouldered the business alone. 
In a leisurely way he began locating new lines for the crossing. 
In the ensuing three weeks, with an occasional trip to Mont- 
gomery, he located between fifteen and sixteen different crossing 
places at every available point above and below Elyton. 

From Stanton's point of view, the confused engineer evidently 
could not make up his mind. There was nothing for Stanton and 
his crowd to do but to wait until he did. Until that crossing was 
located everything was at a standstill. Stanton knew, as every- 
body knew, that there was no money in Alabama after the war. 
As to the options they felt safe ; that was a side matter. Captain 
Alburto Martin however felt a call, being by profession a lawyer, 
to look to the interests of the Jones Valley people, who were his 
kith and kin. He therefore went to work and got possession of the 
deeds to Stanton, and held them in escrow. 

As the date for the expiration of the options approached, Cap- 
tain Martin, heading a delegation of the landholders, went down 
to Montgomery. To all appearances John T. Milner took no in- 
terest in this option business ; he just kept on locating crossings, 
making a new one every day. Not a director or a stockholder in 
the company could get two words out of him. 

The sixtieth day was at hand, and no funds had yet been placed 



FOUNDING GREAT WORKSHOP TOWN, 1869-1872 221 

at Josiah Morris' bank by Stanton. On the morning of the 
second day of grace John T. Milner casually dropped into the 
South and North office at Montgomery. Meantime Major 
Campbell Wallace had run over from Atlanta. He asked, as 
every other South and North Railroad man was asking, " Mil- 
ner, where is that crossing going to be ? " But Milner made 
no reply. 

The third day of grace, December 19, 1870, dawned. No word 
had come from Stanton, or from a single man of the Alabama 
and Chattanooga crowd; neither were there any funds from 
Boston or so much as a sign of any. Just about noon of this last 
day John Milner strolled into the Morris bank. Captain Martin 
and the J ones Valley landholders were gathered in the lobby, and 
in no easy frame of mind. 

Precisely on the minute marking the close of the time allowed 
within the law, Josiah Morris himself sat down on the cashier's 
stool and handed out to Captain Martin the cash for the first 
option, for the second, the third, and so on, till one hundred thou- 
sand dollars in cold cash was handed out of that window, and 
four thousand one hundred and fifty acres of land, the whole 
site for John T. Milner's town, bought in the name of Josiah 
Morris. 1 

All of the men interested in the big purchase then gathered at 
the bank, formed a realty company, and drew up a declaration, 
which was filed in the probate court of Jefferson County the 
following day, December 20, 1870. This read: 

The State of Alabama, Jefferson County. To the Probate 
Judge of said county: The undersigned respectfully represent 
unto your honor that they have formed an association for buy- 
ing lands and selling lots with a view to the location, laying off, 
and effecting the building of a city at or near Elyton, in said 
county, in which county the business is to be carried on, and are 
desirous of being incorporated. 

1 Josiah Morris was born in 1818 on the eastern shore of Maryland. 
He left for Georgia at an early age and engaged in the mercantile business, 
going later into the cotton trade. In 1852 he located in New Orleans where 
he made what was then considered a fortune. In 1856 he settled in Mont- 
gomery, Alabama, and opened a private bank. He was interested at one 
time in the Montevallo Coal Company. His financial assistance to John 
T. Milner at the critical point made possible the founding of Birmingham, 
but he was not himself, as so frequently stated, the founder of that city. 
His loan was in the nature of a personal favor to Colonel Milner, and he 
was eventually relieved of his purchases in Jones Valley by the Elyton 
Land Company. Of the 20,000 shares of stock he originally held he reserved 
only 500, assigning the remainder to the company. The Morris Hotel in 
Birmingham is named for him. 



222 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



And for that purpose attach hereto a declaration in writing, 
as required by law. 

The undersigned apply for a charter, and to be incorporated 
under the general incorporation law of the State of Alabama. 
Josiah Morris J. N. Gilmer 

J. R. Powell B. P. Worthington 

Sam Tate Robert N. Greene 

Campbell Wallace W. F. Nabers 

H. M. Caldwell John A. Milner 

Bolling Hall Wm. S. Mudd 

We, whose names are subscribed to this declaration, do hereby 
declare and make known for the purposes aforesaid as follows : 

1. That said association shall be known by the corporate name 
of the " Elyton Land Company," and the object for which it is 
formed is, the buying lands and selling lots with the view to the 
location, laying off and effecting the building of a city at or near 
the town of Elyton, in the County of Jefferson and State of 
Alabama. 

2. That the amount of the Capital Stock is $200,000, which is 
divided into two thousand shares. 

A second meeting was called shortly after New Year's Day. 
Then on January 26, 1871, the incorporators again met at the 
Morris bank and elected James R. Powell president, and formally 
transferred the Jones Valley property bought by Josiah Morris, 
at Milner's instance, to the Elyton Land Company. By-laws 
were also adopted and a name for the city was decided upon. 
Milner, it seems, had thought of everything except the name. 1 
A suitable name was suggested by Josiah Morris, whereupon there 
was unanimous approval and the following clause was at once 
inserted in the by-laws : " The city to be built by the Elyton Land 
Company, near Elyton, in the county of Jefferson, State of Ala- 
bama, shall be called Birmingham." 2 

Thus it was that the little town destined to become the railroad 
center, the great coal depot, and the main headquarters of iron 

1 "When this good town of Birmingham was organized," Truman H. 
Aldrich says, " there was a great discussion as to the name that would be 
given it. Some suggested calling it Powellton after Colonel Powell, at the 
head of the Elyton Land Company ; others wanted to name it Milnerville 
or Morrisville. Mr. Josiah Morris objected very strongly to those names, 
and, looking out of the window, said there was a distinguished citizen who 
was a native of an adjoining town whose name would be particularly ap- 
propriate, and to name it after Judge Mudd arid call it Muddtown. As 
a matter of fact, nothing could have suited the place more at that particu- 
lar time, and indeed for a good while later ! The town just missed it ! " 

2 There was at the time one little village in northeast Alabama also 
named Birmingham, but beyond its name on Michael Tuomey's old map, 
it had no further character. 



FOUNDING GREAT WORKSHOP TOWN, 1869-1872 223 



and steel making of Alabama and of the whole South, was named 
for the seat of iron manufacture in the mother country, Birming- 
ham the best workshop town in all England. 

From that day the realty company that sprung thus, full 
armed as it were, out of the brain of John T. Milner into the 
midst of the bewildered little company, took leadership at once 
upon itself. 

In addition to John Milner's definitely pointed plan there 
were the reinforcements of Josiah Morris' bank, and the lively 
and energetic personality, the brains, and capital of James R. 
Powell. 

As for Powell, he became a central figure at this turn of events 
— a decided character and influence. He was a six-footer, they 
say, with shoulders broad as a jockey's and his body was long, 
narrow-built, and raw-boned. He had a thin, keen, clean-shaven, 
ruddy face with thick, cotton-white hair, a strong, prominent 
nose, sharp, gray eyes, and a square jaw. " He was argumentative 
and dictatorial," notes Kevin St. Michael Cunningham; "his 
nose told on him, y 5 know. He 'd break everything his way, 'd 
fight a legion of devils, -f know." Odd to say, he was not a 
Tennessean, but a Virginian. His first essay at earning a living 
had been as an assistant teacher in the Lowndes County Academy, 
a vocation for which he was eminently unfitted, according to all 
accounts. Before his twentieth year, however, he gave up his 
books, and astride his own little mare, made for the new, wide 
South. Just as Frank Gilmer rode into Alabama, and about the 
same time (1833), Jim Powell finally reached the town of Mont- 
gomery, with no assets beyond twenty dollars in cash, his gun, a 
bag of salt and meal, and the little mare. 

He took any job he could get, and was finally forced to sell 
the little mare. He tried one thing and another, and at length 
he took a contract as mail rider for the government on the pony 
express established between Nashville and Montgomery, during 
Andrew Jackson's administration. 

Up to the late eighteen-thirties this was the method of mail 
service in Alabama. The speed averaged ten miles an hour, and 
at the finish of each ten-mile course, relays of fresh horses of 
the best blood waited the carriers. Those boy riders were the 
heroes of the road; James Powell rode fine and wild like Bill 
Weatherford. All along the old Huntsville Pike, when children 
heard the sound of a galloping horse they would tumble, breath- 



224 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



less, to the road's edge to see him riding by. And often in the 
dead of night, Baylis Grace has chronicled, the early settlers of 
Elyton and Jonesboro would be startled out of their sleep and 
wake to the sound of the pony express passing like sudden 
thunder. 

One of the boys who rode the route along with Jim Powell was a 
young fellow by the name of Jimmie Pugh whose father and 
mother had died, leaving him to shift for himself. They had 
brought him into Alabama in 1823 from Georgia. The boy car- 
ried the mail route, three days in the week, and put himself 
through school with the wages he made at that. He went up the 
ladder, round by round, and eventually became United States 
senator James L. Pugh. He obtained the first appropriation for 
a lock on the Warrior River, and is frequently referred to as " the 
father of the water-way improvements of Alabama/' 

When the express was abolished, Powell started a mail coach 
line of his own. He also began to make investments in cotton 
lands with his savings and to take a hand in politics. He was a 
born speculator, and, like most Southern men, a born Democrat ; 
he made business, as he made life, a series of adventures. Precisely 
twelve years from the time he entered the State and had to sell 
his little mare, he was elected to the State legislature from Coosa 
County, and became " Colonel " Powell and was a large land- 
holder. He later served two terms in the State senate. William 
Garrett in his " Reminiscences of Public Men in Alabama," says : 

" Colonel Powell was a shrewd, practical man. He often ad- 
dressed the House in a brief but very sensible manner, in behalf 
of or against any measure, as he might think proper, and as his 
judgment dictated. He was active and useful on committees, 
and in the general despatch of the public business. His sugges- 
tions always denoted a closely observing mind, and a rare degree 
of penetration." 

He retired from the political forum, however, to concentrate 
upon ways and means of whipping Robert Jemison of Tuska- 
loosa out of the mail coach business; for Jemison's competing 
line was by this time becoming Powell's most formidable rival. 
Robert Jemison, it seems, had outlined a similar policy against 
Powell. Each then ran the other to the verge of bankruptcy, 
and at length they were forced to consolidate " to save the fur." 
The Jemison, Powell, Ficklen, and Company stage line was then 
organized, and traversed every pike and highway through north 



FOUNDING GREAT WORKSHOP TOWN, 1869-1872 225 

and central Alabama until the incoming of the railroads. Follow- 
ing the war, in which he took no part beyond manufacturing ice 
gratis in 1863 for the Confederate hospitals, the colonel started 
a big colonization scheme down on the Yazoo River in Mississippi ; 
he planned the making of a cotton world where he might rule like 
a shah. He toured Europe in 1869 and 1870, returning to Mont- 
gomery in time to help Milner do up the Yankee Stanton and 
his Alabama and Chattanooga crowd. 

The colonel had the iron ores of Red Mountain analyzed by 
experts, the coal seams tested and proved, and limestone quarries 
opened. He learned that building stone, marble, clay, and brick 
were all in easy reach, and demonstrated, in fine, that if railroads 
once crossed the section, there would be the making of a city in 
Jones Valley, such as could be found nowhere else in Alabama, 
or, indeed, in the South. He saw in it a business venture worth his 
mettle, worth his time, and worth his money, something, indeed, 
" with millions in it." His enthusiasm more than matched John 
Milner's. 

Preliminaries for the laying out of the town in the stubble 
field were then discussed by Milner and Powell; the various 
details for the streets, parks, schools, churches, and railroad reser- 
vations. " These reservations are gone now," John Milner wrote 
in 1886, " and in a short time there will be diflSculty in railroads 
passing through the city. I had from the beginning determined 
to locate this town nowhere unless a large area of ground was 
owned and controlled by one company. Although I had been 
looking to this thing for years, I had no conception of its present 
grandeur, nor did any one else, for the minerals which gave value 
to Birmingham and the country surrounding it were not developed 
until 1879, nearly nine years after the city was founded." 

Another contract was drawn up with Sam Tate and his asso- 
ciates to complete the South and North Railroad. Milner and 
Powell left Montgomery for Birmingham. The plan of the city 
had been agreed upon by the two men and the whole thing was 
now on paper. John T. Milner returned to the Birmingham 
Camp. The railroads, such as they were, had driven out the mail 
coaches. To get to Birmingham, Milner, taking with him his 
little boy, Henry Willis, rode on the South and North from 
Montgomery to Calera, then on the Selma, Rome, and Dalton 
Railroad up to Chattanooga, where they met Colonel Powell, and 
proceeded to Birmingham. 

15 



226 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



" I remember we spent three days riding all over the ground 
on horseback/' says Henry W. Milner. " Cousin John A. Milner, 
who was living then at Elyton, loaned father a couple of his 
horses, and I rode behind Colonel Powell. The place was cleared 
of stumps and trees, but not under cultivation at the time. It 
was just an old cornfield, all overgrown with weeds and briers. 
There were a couple of Alabama and Chattanooga section houses 
alongside the railroad tracks [where the Crane Company's ware- 
houses are to-day] ; that was about all I could recall seeing. 
There was a swamp down by what is now Powell Avenue where 
they had a rabbit drive just a while before and caught seventy- 
five rabbits. That made a great impression on me. I never saw 
anything like the rabbits. Every step our horse took, seemed to 
me, a rabbit would start out of the ground. Colonel Powell 
would turn around each time and say, e Henry, there 's that same 
rabbit following us every step we take; you can tell he is the 
same one by that white tail he 's got ! ' And I would look and 
look and try to figure out how one rabbit could get to be in so 
many places and look like so many other rabbits all at the same 
time. It kept me right busy figuring." 

Powell and Milner at length settled on the main points of the 
town, and Major William P. Barker began running the lines. 
Captain Martin gave to the young town the name " Bucksnort," 
and wrote many a column in the Alabama papers laughing the 
place out of countenance. He even detailed the Milner vs. Stan- 
ton episode in biblical fashion, starting out, " Now, J ohn, the son 
of Stanton, did unto John, the son of Milner," etc. Major Barker 
kept along with his transit work meanwhile, and Colonel Milner, 
Colonel Powell, and little Henry went back to Chattanooga to 
see Stanton. But Stanton was gone. 

Returning to Jones Valley Colonel Powell took up his quarters 
in one of the Alabama and Chattanooga section houses. He per- 
sonally superintended the work of laying out the town, had the 
map recorded, and the streets dedicated to the public. To get 
building material to the spot quickly, he made arrangements with 
a Montgomery contractor to make brick on the Elyton Land Com- 
pany's property, agreeing to pay for them as fast as they were 
burned, .and to supply them at cost to the builders as they were 
needed. The work had progressed far enough to the colonel's eye 
to have a public sale of lots, and the event was set for June 1, fully 
six months before the city charter was granted, and advertised 
by Colonel Powell throughout the State. Although the A. and C. 
track was laid by and beyond the projected town, it had not yet 
got in its rolling stock. The mail coach line was extinct, and the 



FOUNDING GREAT WORKSHOP TOWN, 1869-1872 227 



South and North was still having troubles. Nevertheless, on the 
first sale day the people came in droves. They rode in on horse- 
back and muleback; drove in wagons, carriages, and on teams, 
and they walked if they could not ride. In addition to the two 
section houses there was one other building standing, solitary, in 
the wide, ridged, and weed-grown area of the old corn and cotton 
field. It was a blacksmith shop. It stood on the precise ground 
now occupied by the Steiner Bank, officered by the Steiner 
Brothers, who with Frank Nelson, Jr., own and operate the Em- 
pire Coal Company at the present time. 

Wooden pegs were driven in the big stubble field marking 
street and city limits, and every lot was numbered. For the lot 
fifty by one hundred feet on the corner of First Avenue and 
Twentieth Street, one man in the crowd present bid four hundred 
dollars cash, and it was knocked down to him at once. The pur- 
chaser was an old sea captain, a Swede, named Charles Linn. For 
nearly twenty-five years he had sailed the seven seas ; had crossed 
the Atlantic sixty-five times, and three times circumnavigated the 
globe. Born in 1814 in Finland, of Swedish parents, he went 
before the mast when a boy, and came at length to be captain of 
his own little sailing vessel, and free to go as he would. Landing 
in the United States late in the thirties, he decided to try shore 
life, went south, and set up in the wholesale mercantile business 
in Montgomery in 1840. He married, raised a family, and ac- 
quired a little property. He stood inland life as long as he could, 
but during the war took to the sea again. He bought a brand new 
schooner, ran the blockade and got caught. Paroled later from 
New York, he returned to Montgomery and New Orleans to his 
family and his shore business. Drawn to Birmingham by Powell's 
advertising methods he was one of the first on the spot. He set 
about raising a bank building at once on his lot. It was a tempor- 
ary frame structure, and was, on completion, incorporated under 
the name of the National Bank of Birmingham, the very first in 
the town. Charles Linn himself was president and Colonel 
Powell and Major Willis Milner among the incorporators. 

In the following year Charles Linn built the bank which an 
early chronicler of Birmingham records as being "a costly and 
elaborate brick building, fully three stories high, that over- 
shadowed everything in sight." To this extraordinarily tall edi- 
fice folk gave the name of " Linn's Folly " ; in fact, they said the 
old sea captain was getting dotish. It was on the site of " Linn's 



228 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



Folly," however, that in 1906 a sixteen-story steel structure, the 
largest sky-scraper in the South, was raised, under the name of 
the Brown-Marx. In this modern building in 1909 are the main 
headquarters of the Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company, 
the Pratt Consolidated Coal Company, the Southern Iron and 
Steel Company, the Birmingham Coal and Iron Company, the 
Montevallo Coal Company, the Shelby Iron Company, the Empire 
Coal Company, Galloway Coal Company, and many others. 

The captain put his son, Ed Linn, then fresh out of college, to 
work in the bank. Young E. W. Linn, born in Montgomery in 
1852, had been sent by his father to Germany to school, and later 
graduated from the University of Illinois. In 1882 he was cashier 
in his father's bank, and eventually secretary and treasurer of the 
Southern Bridge Company, of the East Birmingham Land Com- 
pany, and director of the Birmingham Gas and Illuminating 
Company. 

The doughty old sea captain kept his own counsel and plodded 
along. Becoming a stockholder in the Elyton Land Company, he 
invested largely in Jones Valley real estate. He decided sometime 
later to build a machine shop. In 1877 he organized the Bir- 
mingham Foundry and Car Manufacturing Company, later known 
as the Linn Iron Works, now the property of the Tennessee Coal, 
Iron, and Railroad Company, and still used as a machine shop. 

Concerning Colonel Powell, J. W. Du Bose writes : 

" As first president of the Elyton Land Company, Colonel 
Powell did perhaps more than any other one individual to estab- 
lish the company upon a broad and comprehensive line of policy. 
He at once determined that the city of Birmingham should be- 
come the offspring of the company, and that the company should 
foster the city's growth in every way it could. He steadily ad- 
hered to his original plan to buy land — more land, in the face 
of the directors' opposition. One of the stockholders went so 
far as to threaten Powell openly with an injunction from the 
courts to stay ' the mad extravagance ' of land purchases, made 
on the basis of twenty-five dollars per acre, near the city bounds ; 
land that ten years later commanded one thousand dollars per 
lot." 

The month following the first sale of town lots Colonel Powell 
appointed, as secretary and treasurer of the Elyton Land Com- 
pany, Willis J. Milner, the youngest brother of John T. Milner. 
He was a member of the engineering corps of the South and 
North Railroad and in that way entered Birmingham. Through- 



FOUNDING GREAT WORKSHOP TOWN, 1869-1872 229 



out a period of twenty-five years he was closely indentified with 
the city's growth. As an officer of the Elyton Land Company, 
Major Milner inaugurated the first system of Birmingham water 
works ; laid out the system of streets in the South Highlands, the 
main residence quarter of the city; and in 1884 graded the 
superb Highland Avenue driveway, designed by his cousin, John 
A. Milner, and now celebrated throughout the South. He also 
constructed Lakeview Park, built and operated one of the early 
horsecar lines, and the Belt or Dummy Line Railroad. 

This last venture, undertaken in 1887, was also designed to 
reach to the coal and iron ore mines; to give terminal facilities 
to all railroads casting lines towards Birmingham, and to present 
transportation advantages and easy access of raw material to vari- 
ous manufacturing establishments. It had charter rights to 
extend to the Warrior River, and in idea was a forerunner of the 
Birmingham Mineral Railroad, but lacking capital, succeeded to 
but small grasp of its long reach. Its passenger and freight 
departments were at length separated; the first became a part 
of the Birmingham Railway Light and Power Company's system, 
while the second is now owned and operated by the Frisco system. 

It was at this time (early in 1871) that the Welsh iron-master, 
Giles Edwards, passed through Jones Valley and began his work 
of prospecting and purchasing mineral properties for the Pioneer 
Mining and Manufacturing Company, now part of Republic 
Iron and Steel Company. 

" On our way to Tannehill," Mrs. Edwards remarked, " we 
passed through Elyton, and saw the site of Birmingham. There 
were then only two section houses for the men starting the rail- 
road — nothing else. But my husband pointed up the long 
valley. 6 There lies Birmingham,' he said ; e all that is going to 
be Birmingham some day.' And he spread his arms out to take 
in the whole country — so." 

At Tannehill the Edwards family occupied a house near the ruins 
of the old stone furnace. It is still standing and is known as the 
" old mansion house." Here they entertained extensively, having 
visitors from many parts, especially from Pennsylvania, among 
them members of the Thomas family and Captain Bill Jones. 

In response to an inquiry from one E. Wilbur of Bethlehem, 
Pennsylvania, relative to the cost of constructing a then modern 
plant on the old furnace site at Tannehill, Giles Edwards wrote, 
May 26, 1871 : 



230 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



" 1. The cost of building a charcoal blast furnace at this place, 
of the following dimensions : Height, thirty-five feet ; diameter 
at the boshes, nine feet, with hot blast and blowing engine, steam 
boilers, etc., would be thirty-two thousand dollars ($32,000) ; a 
furnace of the above dimensions will make ten tons of pig iron 
per day — (see accompanying estimate^. 

" 2. The cost of making hot blast charcoal iron will range from 
seventeen dollars and fifty cents to twenty dollars per ton. 

" 3. The cost of transportation of pig iron to Mobile from the 
Brierfield Iron Works, the highest rate that I have known was 
seven dollars ($7) per ton, by rail by way of Selma and Meridian, 
Mississippi, to Mobile, and from there by sea to New York at the 
rate of three dollars per ton, — consult the map and compare the 
distance from this place, — Tannehill, and Mobile and Mon- 
tevallo and Mobile. 

" 4. As to the probable time it would take to build up and get 
into blast after first breaking ground, I will say that if a start 
be made the first of August to make charcoal and commence the 
buildings, I believe that I could make about six hundred tons of 
pig iron inside of twelve months. 

"Any other information upon this subject that you desire I 
shall be glad to give at any time." 

The Edwards family eventually removed from Tannehill to 
Woodstock where Mr. Edwards constructed his own blast furnace. 
In addition to being a furnaceman and iron-master, Giles Ed- 
wards was also, according to DeBardeleben and others, a practical 
geologist, a student, an engineer, and an expert prospector. The 
Welshman worked unceasingly for many years at Woodstock. 
His wife was his comrade and his helper in every sense of the word. 
" There never was a better wife than Giles Edwards' wife," an 
old friend exclaimed, " but how she worked ! They were a 
working team, those two! Up from daylight till dark, always 
busy, always doing something for other people. They had a big 
house, and were entertaining company all the time. As no ser- 
vants could be gotten then for love or money, Mrs. Edwards had 
her hands full, and the way she managed things and moved around 
and got things done — there never was her equal ! " Certain it 
is that if ever a woman helped the iron business along in Ala- 
bama it was Giles Edwards' plucky wife. Her greatest desire — 
and her husband's — was to see Wales once more and to take 
their children there. But they never realized their dream. To- 
gether they would often talk Welsh, just as in the old time at 
Carbondale. Mr. Edwards subscribed for a Welsh paper all his 
life and one of his intimate friends was a Welsh bard. Often in 



FOUNDING GREAT WORKSHOP TOWN, 1869-1872 231 



memory he would go back to Merthyr Tydvil, his proud town that 
was named for a king's daughter; and who can ever know how 
many times he saw those shadowy furnaces of other years loom 
dark on the horizon line when his heart would ache for home. 

He was a quiet, kindly, deep-hearted man who loved his work. 
How bitter it was to him to see the fruit of his toil turned to 
cinders, to see the ground he had deemed so solid apparently 
prove to be quicksand, that caught and sucked under his most 
cherished projects, none can ever measure. When the depression 
of 1893 engulfed the land, Giles Edwards was too old to take a 
fresh start, and he died before he could see beyond the bitter 
waters. 

As for young Birmingham, growing up in the cornfields under 
the hands of its various aggressive, hard-working, and ambitious 
citizens, it began gradually to usurp the "pomp, the purple, 
and the power/' as the author of Captain Martin's biography would 
doubtless declare, of the old county seat, little Elyton. At length, 
late in 1872, it wrested from it its pride, "the old co'thouse." 
H. M. Caldwell relates the incident thus: 

" When the president of the Elyton Land Company prevailed 
upon the legislature of the State to pass an act requiring the 
sheriff of the county to order an election to decide the question 
as to the permanent location of the courthouse as between Bir- 
mingham and Elyton, the excitement rose to fever heat. This 
election was held under the loose election laws adopted by the 
reconstruction legislature, which permitted a voter to cast his 
ballot at any precinct in the county without regard to residence, 
and under the operation of which the newly enfranchised 6 citi- 
zen of African descent ' might vote at two or more places the 
same day with very little danger of detection. 

" Colonel Powell determined to capture the courthouse, and 
at once organized a vigorous campaign. His plans were of a 
most elaborate and comprehensive character and were carried out 
in all details with consummate skill. On the day fixed for the 
election, the first Monday in May, 1873, he had prepared, on the 
lot selected by him for the future courthouse, a barbecue on a 
most extensive scale to feed the hungry voters whom he proposed 
to bring to Birmingham. 

"He had perfected arrangements with the railroads to run 
excursion trains from the furthest confines of the county, and 
perhaps beyond, and to transport free every voter, without refer- 
ence to race, color, or previous condition of servitude, who would 
vote his way. About noon on the day of election these trains, 
packed almost to suffocation with a dark mass of perspiring, 
hungry humanity, rolled into Birmingham. Colonel Powell, 



232 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



mounted on old man Dobbins' calico pony, with a drawn sword 
in his hand, was at the depot to marshal his forces and march 
them to the ground, where long tables improvised for the occa- 
sion were now groaning beneath the load of savory meats just 
from the smoking pits. While the dusky sovereigns were being 
formed in line of march, preparing to charge upon the dining- 
tables, some wag caused it to be whispered among them that the 
tall, dignified gentleman on the calico pony was General Grant, 
and forthwith every mother's son of them was prepared to exer- 
cise the prerogative of a free American citizen by voting for Bir- 
mingham, as General Grant (?) wanted them to do. 

" The contest resulted in an overwhelming majority for Bir- 
mingham, and the courthouse of Jefferson County was by the 
edict of the people permanently located at the Magic City. It 
was, 6 Vox populi ! Vox Dei ! ' 99 

Another coup d'etat of Colonel Powell's was his invitation, 
early in the following year, to the members of the New York 
Press Association to meet in the city of Birmingham. And Bir- 
mingham was not then on the map ! The situation savored of 
adventure to the facetiously-minded newspaper men. They came 
en masse. So lavish was Colonel Powell's hospitality, so flowing 
his eloquence, that the scribes were utterly captivated, and they 
wrote of the city of Birmingham, " all that might be, as though 
it were." Then, too, the sight of Red Mountain, and the coals 
and limestone so close at hand, filled the visitors with amazement. 
That iron could be made here cheaper than in any other locality 
in the world was a fact that not only Colonel Powell, but the 
place itself, drove in sharply. It was at this time that Abram 
S. Hewitt, reviewing the district thus portrayed, declared, " The 
fact is plain. Alabama is to be the manufacturing center of the 
habitable globe." 

Meanwhile, in a corner of the new Alabama and Chattanooga 
depot, young Robert H. Henley had set up a little hand press. 
He got out a sheet, The Sun, every seven or eight days. Being 
a boy precisely after Major Tom Peters' heart, Henley worked 
for Birmingham with ardent enthusiasm and with the spirit of 
sincerity. His father was a lawyer and cotton planter, and the 
boy had been brought up at home. Beyond Marengo County 
(settled by a little colony of exiles from France — Napoleon's 
men — in the early part of Alabama's history) young Robert Hen- 
ley had never gone. Beyond seeing some slight service in the field 
for the Confederacy, by which his health had become impaired, he 
knew nothing of the world. Wherefore his ideas were still ideals, 



FOUNDING GREAT WORKSHOP TOWN, 1869-1872 233 



and his dreams had free wing. On request of the early citizens this 
young man was appointed by Governor Lindsay first mayor of the 
city of Birmingham, in the winter of 1871. So high was his ap- 
preciation of the gift of this office that he is said to have declared 
earnestly that whenever the time should come for him to die, he 
could desire no prouder words upon his gravestone than " Here 
lies the first mayor of Birmingham." 

There have been statesmen made of boys with stuff like that — 
later proven! 

Robert Henley found work to his hand and work which he did. 
Like the Honorable James Titus, the first and sole Upper and 
Lower " House " of the territorial legislature of Alabama, Henley, 
too, had to be several in one. He had, in fact, to be police force, 
city council, mayor, and editor, too. He married Tom Peters' 
girl, the major's only child. But it was not long before he began 
his fight with tuberculosis. After less than a year's hard service 
in behalf of Birmingham, young Robert Henley died. Into his 
place as mayor, the city council then appointed Thomas S. Tate, 
one of Colonel Sam Tate's sons, and he was succeeded in December, 
1872, by the big-shouldered Colonel Powell, who was the first 
mayor elected by the people. The colonel was called (from that 
time on) "The Duke of Birmingham." He kept on writing 
stories about Birmingham that, more than all things else, sold 
the Elyton Land Company's lots. He related things in an off- 
hand conversational way, which was new in southern journalism, 
and straight from the shoulder as folk talk. Eor instance, here 
is a quotation from the colonel's writing in the spring of 1872 : 

" There are representatives here in Birmingham from all sec- 
tions of Alabama. Having a tolerably extensive acquaintance in 
the State, I find old friends and acquaintances from every direc- 
tion. And they are all men of enterprise and full of vim. To 
give you an idea of how business is done at this time, I happened 
to be in Jacksonville along about March 1, and just as I was leav- 
ing I met on the train Jim Morris from West Point, Georgia. 
Morris was a good old friend of mine. I said to him : 

" 6 What are you doing out here, Jim? where are you going? ' 

« 6 Why,' he said, 6 1 've heard so much of Birmingham, I 've 
decided to run up there and see the place for myself.' 

" ( Do you intend to settle there ? ' I asked. 

Don't know,' said Morris; ' might, if I like it.' We sepa- 
rated then and I saw no more of Jim until yesterday, when I 
was at the corner of Twentieth Street and Second Avenue, taking 
in my breath at the way the place was growing, when somebody 



234 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



called to me from across the street. It was Jim Morris. He had 
built him a fine storeroom and stocked it full of furniture — good 
furniture at that. He had nearly finished another two-story 
storehouse, all in about three weeks' time, and he looks to-day as 
jovial and happy as he ever looked in West Point." 

The colonel's statement that Birmingham was " a perfect Ma- 
homet's paradise of lovely women," it has been stated, " brought 
more farmers into town than you could count. While they were 
looking all over Red Mountain for the ladies, why, the colonel 
sold them lots. Powell was undoubtedly the most astute real 
estate agent in Alabama history ! " 

Young Birmingham became in reality a staring, bold, mean, 
little town : " Marshes and mud roads everywhere and yellow 
pine shacks and a box car for a depot, and gamblers and traders 
from all over the globe. A man had to drink full a quart of 
whiskey before he could see what Powell said was there. And 
whiskey ran like water. Poker games, cock-fights, and ' trades ' 
were the order of the day from then, off and on, until the eighteen- 
eighties." 

Meanwhile coal and iron, the virgin wealth of the State, slept 
inviolate. The Elyton Land Company did its level best under 
Powell, Caldwell, and Major Milner, to get things into shape, 
and itself on solid ground. Besides the lands owned by the com- 
pany, it had no other resources. In the market value of these 
stubble fields lay the very existence of the company — its whole 
life and strength. The problem was then how to give to this land 
a market value. 

To every settler who would build a home or a mercantile es- 
tablishment of some sort, special inducements were therefore 
offered by the Elyton Land Company. One of the first moves 
of the company, under Powell's dictation, was to provide a hos- 
telry. A two-story frame hotel, L-shaped, was accordingly put 
up close to the railroad tracks. It was named "The Relay 
House," and was destined to be for the next twenty-five years 
the main headquarters for the coal and iron men of Alabama. 

" I remember," said Mr. Aldrich, " I distinctly remember the 
old Relay House. It was our home ! I remember the two high, 
gilt-framed mirrors that people, especially the ladies, used to 
come to see for miles around." 1 

1 A clipping from The Birmingham Age, of an early date refers to the 
same mirrors: "The mirrors have an interesting history. They were 



FOUNDING GREAT WORKSHOP TOWN, 1869-1872 235 



Even as early as the year 1886, this hostelry was known as the 
" Old " Relay House. Bordering its site to-day is the Chamber 
of Commerce. 

Among the men early on the ground who became identified 
with the city's making were B. F. Roden, R. H. Pearson, and F. 
P. O'Brien. 

As for Benjamin F. Roden, then a young Gadsden merchant, 
he had chanced by at Colonel Powell's public invitation, in August 
of 1871, thinking here was a possible market for lumber. He 
was right, too, for he closed a trade the day of his arrival, selling 
a load of shingles at three dollars and fifty cents per thousand 
for the Relay House. Mr. Roden was a keen, quick, practical 
sort; he knew every inch of Alabama soil, and finding more of 
a spirit of hustle in the J ones Valley camp than in other places, 
invested at once, put up a grocery store, and from that day forth 
built along with the town. He wa.s from old pioneer stock, 
tracing back to English descent. His grandfather, John B. Roden 
of South Carolina, was a traveling companion of Daniel Boone, 
and came to Alabama during territorial times, and was, in fact, 
the first tax collector of Blount County. His father, W. B. 
Roden, after a term of service in the Seminole War, married 
Viola, Honorable Joseph D. Harrison's daughter, and settled 
down on a farm in DeKalb County. Benjamin F. Roden was 
born here in 1844 and brought up on the farm. At the outbreak 
of the war, he enlisted in the ranks of the Thirty-first Alabama 
and saw service at the front. Having been wounded at Shiloh, 
he was detailed to the quartermaster's department and also served 
as assistant surgeon. At the close of the war, crippled as he was, 
he set out for Texas. " I wanted to get an education," he said, 
" and I wanted to see the country." He worked his way through 
McKenzie College at Clarksville, paying his way by teaching the 
Choctaws in summer, up in Indian Territory. He returned to 
Alabama later and set up a grocery and timber business in 
Gadsden. He eventually left there to make permanent settle- 
formerly used by Jefferson Davis and were in his residence at Montgomery 
during the war. The two mirrors were the property of Colonel James R. 
Powell who rented them to the Confederate president. For some time 
these polished surfaces reflected the face of the famous Confederate presi- 
dent. The last act he did before leaving his residence on the day of his 
inauguration was to stand before one of these mirrors and make his toilet 
for the auspicious event. After he left his Montgomery residence Colonel 
Powell moved the mirrors to Biraiingham and they were placed in the 
parlors of the Relay House." 



236 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



ment at the Birmingham camp. He was in at the acorn be- 
ginnings of all the mercantile, real estate, banking, mining, 
manufacturing, and transportation enterprises planted in the 
rough, little, wooden town. He built and officered the Birming- 
ham Street Railway Company, which, with the Elyton Land 
Company's railway enterprises under Major Milner, was the 
first local transportation line. Mr. Roden also founded the Avon- 
dale Land Company, the Hillman Hotel Company, the Birming- 
ham Chain Works, the Birmingham Insurance Company, and the 
B. F. Roden Wholesale Grocery Company. With R. H. Pearson 
he organized the Central Coal Company, founded and officered 
the Roden Coal Company, and also became an officer and director 
of the Avondale cotton mills and a number of the city banks. 
He had accumulated, at the time of his death, on February 23, 
1908, large properties, means, and influence. 

Robert H. Pearson, like Mr. Roden, was a native Alabamian 
and originally of English stock. He was the first lawyer of 
Birmingham. Born in 1850, on a Barbour County farm, R. 
H. Pearson began his working career teaching school, and later 
studied law at Lebanon, Tennessee. Graduating in 1871, he was 
admitted to the bar in his home county. " Every one everywhere 
was trying to get to Birmingham," he said, " so I thought it 
would be a good place for me to start law practice." He event- 
ually became assistant solicitor of the court of Jefferson County, 
served for many years as city attorney, and at one time as mayor 
of Birmingham. He was the first legal representative of the 
pioneer coal and iron corporations, and subsequently became a 
coal operator himself. He bought out Pierce's mines, near War- 
rior, which had been opened before Birmingham was laid out, to 
supply the railroad demand. He organized the Pearson Coal 
and Coke Company, opened up the Wolf Den Hollow mine, and 
enlarged the Warrior operations. He also acquired the Kimberly 
properties on the Jefferson seam, developed them, and consoli- 
dated them in 1902 with Roden's Central Coal Company in 
which he became a director. He then organized the J eff erson Coal 
and Coke Company, and took hand with B. F. Roden in his vari- 
ous realty and industrial enterprises. He meanwhile acquired 
more coal properties throughout Blount, Walker, and Fayette 
counties, and in 1908 organized the Pearson Coal and Iron 
Company. While he had no political aspirations, he stood high 
in the Democratic ranks, and served several terms as chairman 
of the county Democratic executive committee. 



FOUNDING GREAT WORKSHOP TOWN, 1869-1872 237 



In 1903 he was selected as a member of the arbitration board 
which settled the coal miners' strike, and on which J udge George 
Gray of Delaware was chairman. Colonel Pearson died October 
16, 1909, in Birmingham. 

As to Frank P. O'Brien there are many details of interest. 
Young O'Brien was an Irish boy, born in the Old Country, in the 
city of Dublin, February 29, 1844. He was the son of Michael 
O'Brien, who was an educator and writer, and, after his emigra- 
tion to America in 1848, a mining man, who settled at Scranton, 
Pennsylvania. When young Frank was fourteen years of age, 
he quit school and ran away from home. He took up the trade of 
scenic and fresco painter, working under Peter S. Schmidt who 
was engaged in mural decoration in the capitol at Washington, 
District of Columbia. Schmidt was employed in 1859 to deco- 
rate the theater at Montgomery, Alabama, and brought young 
O'Brien south. With the outbreak of the war, the Irish lad 
enlisted with the Montgomery Blues. He saw active service, and 
when the war was over, he went back to his first trade, wandering 
through many a town. Then in 1871, he landed in the camp of 
Birmingham, as a contractor and builder. Straight from the 
town's birth year to the present day, a period of nearly forty 
years, Captain O'Brien, hearty and honest, aggressive, ambitious, 
and prosperous, has been identified with Birmingham. He 
brought into Alabama the first steam machinery for making brick, 
conducted a planing mill, superintended, in 1879 and 1880, the 
construction of the first rolling mill in the Birmingham District, 
and built the coke ovens of the Pratt Coal and Iron Company, 
at Alice and Oxmoor. With Colonel J. F. B. Jackson he estab- 
lished the Birmingham Gas and Electric Company, now the Bir- 
mingham Railway, Light, and Power Company. Captain O'Brien 
also owned and edited the Age Herald at one time, and served 
as sheriff of Jefferson County. In 1908 he was elected to the 
office of first mayor of Greater Birmingham, which position he 
now holds. 



CHAPTER XVI 

RECONSTRUCTION OF OXMOOR AND ADVENT OF LOUISVILLE 
AND NASHVILLE RAILROAD INTO ALABAMA 1872-1873 

Controlling interest in Red Mountain Iron and Coal Company acquired by- 
Daniel Pratt and Henry F. DeBardeleben. Judge H. D. Clayton elected 
president. Name of company changed to Eureka Mining Company. 
Last venture of Daniel Pratt. Young DeBardeleben comes on the field. 
Early history of the " King of the southern iron world." Joseph Squire's 
reminiscences. Oxmoor furnaces at length rebuilt. Dramatic episodes 
in railroad history. Another crisis in affairs of the South and North. 
The Sage-Stevenson-Stanton conspiracy. Defeat of Frank Gilmer. 
Albert Fink saves the day. Details of the Sloss proposition. Question of 
interstate traffic before Louisville and Nashville officials. M. H. Smith's 
recollections. Railroad system needed Southern outlet. Arguments 
for and against extension policy. John T. Milner converts Albert Fink. 
Dramatic scenes in the blue parlor. Explosion of Sam Tate's bomb. 
President Newcomb adjourns meeting sine die. Scrap between Tate 
and Newcomb. Terms of compromise. Construction work resumed on 
South and North. Introduction of Colonel Alfred S. Rives, Frank W. 
Wadsworth, J. F. B. Jackson, Bartley Boyle, St. Kevin St. Michael 
Cunningham, and James Cozby Long. Apparent failure of extension 
policy. Summary of coal mines operating in 1873. Failure of Irondale 
and panic of '73. Cholera plague in Jones Valley. Fall of Birmingham. 

EARLY spring of 1872 marked the entrance of Daniel 
Pratt and Henry Fairchild DeBardeleben into the Bir- 
mingham District. They acquired controlling interest in 
the Red Mountain Iron and Coal Company, and upon Colonel 
Troy's failure to enlist northern capital in the reconstruction of 
the Oxmoor furnaces, they assumed charge of the reconstruction 
work. A reorganization was effected, Judge Henry D. Clayton of 
Eufaula, Alabama, was elected president, and the name of the 
company was changed to the Eureka Mining Company, after 
Captain E. B. Ward's triumphant Michigan enterprise. 

Daniel Pratt and Judge Clayton put up the bulk of the money 
needed to construct two twenty-five-ton charcoal furnaces modeled 
after the Shelby plant, and agreed to make up deficiencies, should 
the other stockholders fail to raise the full amount required. 

This venture of Daniel Pratt is spoken of by his biographer, 
Mrs. Tarrant, as " the last and crowning act of his life." She 



RECONSTRUCTION OF OXMOOR 239 



says : " It was undertaken reluctantly on account of his age 
and infirmity, for he doubted if he should live to witness its 
completion, yet his State pride urged him to undertake it. He 
believed something should be done to develop the mineral resources 
of the State. He thought labor should be diversified in order 
that the South might sustain herself. . . . For this enterprise 
he felt great solicitude, and remarked a few days before his last 
illness, ' If it as the will of God, I should like to see the completion 
of this enterprise/ " 

Young DeBardeleben, who was Mr. Pratt's son-in-law, was 
appointed superintendent and general manager of the new com- 
pany at a salary of $7,000 per year, which was big money for the 
office in those days. " And I came in and took charge of what I 
knew nothing about ! " DeBardeleben says : " I 'd worked iron 
up into gins, but I had never set eyes on the raw product. Ox- 
moor was my first lesson in the iron business, and Joe Squire was 
my first teacher on coal." 

Up to this time, early in 1872, DeBardeleben had never put 
foot in the mineral region. Nothing was known of him more 
than that he had helped run the gin factory down in Prattville for 
several years and had married Ellen Pratt, Daniel Pratt's only 
child. He now took hold of his new job, and began to spur on 
the work to a galloping pace. Savagely energetic, restless, im- 
patient, he seemed to have one foot always in the stirrup, and to 
be itching to mount and be off and away. Surely he had plenty 
of sap in his bones. He was just about thirty then, and dashingly 
good looking, they say. Six feet tall, he was erect and well pro- 
portioned, and an athlete. He could leap his horse clear from 
the ground, they tell, and ride like Bill Weatherford. His hair 
and mustache were black, his face ruddy, and his eyes black and 
quick as a bird's. His aquiline nose and a certain arch of brows, 
with the bright quickness of his eye, gave to his profile then, as 
now, a keenness, a hawk-like look. 

Although born and reared in Alabama, Henry Fairchild De- 
Bardeleben was of Hessian breed, and showed it. His great- 
grandfather was one of the twenty-two thousand fighting men who 
came out of Hesse-Cassel to the Colonies, at England's call, during 
the American Revolution. Landing at Charleston, South Caro- 
lina, this Captain DeBardeleben hired out himself, his sword, 
and his men, for England. When the war was over, he got a wife 
in South Carolina and bred tall sons in the Southern woods. 



240 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



A liking for the wild forest, a free life, and the big surge of the far 
away hills had quickened the DeBardeleben blood for generations. 
" The Indian's life as it used to be, — that is the only life worth 
living," Colonel DeBardeleben says : " I 'd rather be out in the 
woods on the back of a fox-trotting mule, with a good seam of 
coal at my feet than be president of the United States. I never 
get lonely in the woods, for I picture as I go along, and the rocks 
and the forests are the only books I read." 

And, indeed, given his fox-trotting mule, a coal seam, and a 
" couple of niggers " with picks and shovels, and DeBardeleben, 
even to-day, becomes lost to civilization for months at a time. 
He is a born woodsman, and never gets lost in the woods, but in a 
town or city, even in Birmingham itself, that he has seen grow 
from a smithy and railroad crossing to the great coal, iron, and 
steel center of the South, he frequently becomes more or less 
bewildered. 

To return for a moment to his forebears. Scarcely a record is 
extant. The old Hessian captain's grandson, Henry DeBardele- 
ben, left South Carolina for Alabama in his later life. His first 
wife had died, and late in the eighteen-thirties he married a Miss 
Fairchild of New York. He owned a cotton plantation in Au- 
tauga County, where was born, in 1841, his oldest son, Henry 
Fairchild DeBardeleben, destined to become the most pictur- 
esque and dramatic character in the coal and iron history of 
the South. 

When Henry DeBardeleben was no more than ten years old, 
his father died. His mother then took her little family to Mont- 
gomery. Henry began to earn a few dollars a month by working 
in a grocery store. At that time in Alabama there was a strong 
bond of interest and friendship between the few Northern men 
and women in the State, and Daniel Pratt and his wife were old- 
time friends of the widow DeBardeleben. Pratt at length became 
the guardian of Henry P. DeBardeleben, and brought him to 
Prattville when he was sixteen years old and sent him to school. 
He took him into his home as one of his own family, and brought 
him up as his own son, in the "big white house," as the Pratt 
home was always called. 

Now from the plain record of his life, Daniel Pratf s one gospel 
was work. Indeed, he wore duty, labor, principle, religion, 
strapped, as boards, upon his back. His weather-vane pointed 
uncompromisingly toward New England. His sphere of life was 



RECONSTRUCTION OF OXMOOR 241 



a narrow height, skyward reaching, rock-rimmed, just such a 
place for an eagle's breeding. And, indeed, one scarcely stretches 
a point when it is said that from this rock in reality an eagle did 
take wing, as presently shall be discerned. 

For the time being, however, one may readily surmise that the 
wild boy with the Hessian blood in his veins must have been 
often a sore trial to Daniel Pratt. He was forever cutting loose 
from everything, and making for the woods, stalking deer, run- 
ning down rabbits and foxes, making his home with all manner 
of strange folk. Books and the four walls of the schoolroom 
irked young Henry, but Daniel Pratt bent him to study and dis- 
cipline two mortal years. To keep him occupied out of school 
hours, however, and to give him a chance to work off some of 
his energy, he made the boy boss of the teamsters and the lumber 
yard. This job got the young fellow up before daylight, and gave 
him some slight idea of discipline, self-control, and management ; 
it gave him, too, a certain fellowship with the men about the 
works. The boy was not a shirker or lazy. Then, too, work was 
a respite from the books. At length he had his chance to quit 
books altogether, for Daniel Pratt made him superintendent of 
the gin factory. 

Then the war broke out, and young DeBardeleben enlisted as a 
private in the Prattville Dragoons. He lay in barracks a space, 
at Pensacola, and then made straight for the firing line. A sinew 
of Bragg's army, his company went through Shiloh, after which 
DeBardeleben was detailed out of the field by Governor Shorter, 
to take charge of the bobbin factory at Prattville, which had been 
pressed into the Confederate service. This year, 1862, was also 
the year of his marriage to Ellen Pratt, the daughter of Daniel 
Pratt. She was sixteen and DeBardeleben twenty-one years 
of age. 

He got into habits of steady industry during the ensuing years, 
became of some real assistance to Daniel Pratt, and helped manage 
with good grip the growing business. Pratt came to confide 
more and more his business projects to his son-in-law, and in 
particular, his new railroad enterprises, the South and North busi- 
ness, and the iron making venture in Shades Valley. 

The coal mines of the Red Mountain Company were at that 
time in charge of Joe Squire who had been employed since the 
fall of 1871 by George N. Gilmer and A. J. Noble. Mr. Squire 
also had charge of the engineering work. 

16 



242 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



" On May 13, 1872," he writes, " Daniel Pratt and Henry F. 
DeBardeleben came to the Helena Mines, and informed me that 
they had bought a controlling interest in the Red Mountain Com- 
pany's mining and furnace property, and requested me to keep 
charge of the Helena mines, and also do some surveying at once 
at the Oxmoor furnace property. I got on their waiting train 
and accompanied them to Oxmoor, where they directed me to 
survey the boundaries of the lands, especially the Red Mountain 
Company's lands, and locate a mine in the Red Ore, and a tram 
road for the supply of the furnaces with said ore, and more es- 
pecially to notify the people in the houses at the works to please 
vacate them as they would be needed in the course of a month 
for the hands." 

Early in the winter of 1873, the Oxmoor furnace went into 
blast. Daniel Pratt was down then, ill to death, but he rejoiced 
deeply over the fact that the reconstruction work, by which he 
hoped the South would gain new life, and diversified industries 
have birth, had at length, partly by means of his own earnings 
and his counsel, and by the work done by his son-in-law, reached 
completion. 

" I remember the very day our furnaces went into blast," said 
DeBardeleben; "the dogs started up a deer, and ran him full 
speed clean over the pig bed. The woods all round were chuck 
full of game. The wild turkeys flew every which way." The place 
is still wild and wooded and strangely picturesque. 

The village of Oxmoor took on new lease of life for a little 
while, under DeBardeleben' s administration. Mary Gordon Duf- 
fee revisited the place about this time when she was invited to 
Birmingham as the guest of the city. Of Oxmoor she says : 

" The furnaces were just rebuilt, and the former sense of busy, 
active life pervaded the spot. Here every attention was shown 
me, deference to my slightest wishes, manifested by all the em- 
ployees from the highest to the lowest. Carefully I investigated 
the works and made notes. But those who expected brilliant 
language from me were disappointed. I was too full of the silent 
memories of the dark hours of the past to venture a word. I 
knew I could not talk ; I was too deeply moved. Little did the 
elegant men who escorted me about know how often I brushed 
the tears away as I made notes in my book. There I stood by 
the enormous engine wheel, and recognized the hand of kind 
Heaven in raising up Daniel Pratt to 6 rebuild the waste places 5 
and ' make the desert blossom as the rose.' " 

We withdraw now for a space from Oxmoor, and the story of 
DeBardeleben to take up again the tale of the South and North 



RECONSTRUCTION OF OXMOOR 243 



Railroad, and to relate the curious and dramatic circumstances 
under which the Louisville and Nashville Railroad Company 
acquired possession of the great State road, and shouldered the 
burdens of the Birmingham district. Notwithstanding the fact 
that John T. Milner had beaten Stanton on the cross roads 
proposition, and frustrated the first effort to transfer the now 
growing young town of Birmingham to Chattanooga, both the 
town and the South and North Railroad were again caught in a 
noose of Stanton's throwing, that threatened to strangle them 
both. 

The State of Alabama, itself, emaciated, impotent, was just be- 
ginning to writhe out of the grasp of Carpet-bag legislation. It 
had indorsed first mortgage State bonds in New York to the 
amount of $2,200,000 to aid the South and North in its construc- 
tion to Birmingham. The road was then actually in operation to 
Birmingham, and complete as far as Blount Springs. A sixty- 
six-mile gap between the Springs and a point twenty-seven miles 
south of Decatur lay yet unfinished, practically untouched. These 
bonds, issued and hypothecated by the railroad, were not sold, 
but were so disposed of to the pledgee that they could be sold 
by him at his option, at either public or private sale. Two of the 
pledgees in question, who were also the men holding a majority 
of the bonds, were Russell Sage and V. K. Stevenson. They 
were, with John C. Stanton, allied to Chattanooga interests. 
When the State of Alabama failed to meet interest on these 
bonds, Sage and Stevenson took train at once from New York to 
Montgomery, where they met Stanton. The time of this meeting 
and of the subsequent transaction is termed by Milner " the most 
critical and dangerous period in the history of Birmingham 
and of the South and North Railroad." 

Before going into the banking business in New York, V. K. 
Stevenson, it seems, had served as president of the Nashville and 
Chattanooga Railroad Company, and was then a controlling 
stockholder in that railroad, and had large holdings in the town 
of Chattanooga. Stanton himself had just completed a hotel in 
Chattanooga, " The Stanton House." It had been built with 
Alabama State money, or bonds corresponding to State money. 
He had invested largely in town lots, and had made up his mind, 
since Birmingham had been lost to him and to the Alabama 
and Chattanooga Railroad Company (now Alabama Great South- 
ern) through John Milner's "trick," that all the commerce in 



244 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



coal and iron, which was about to open up in Jefferson County, 
should be carried straight up to Chattanooga. And there con- 
nections would be made for its world-wide markets. " Chatta- 
nooga, not Birmingham/' writes John W. Du. Bose, "was de- 
signed thus to become the entrepot of the mineral wealth of 
Alabama." 

A meeting of the directors of the South and North was called 
by Sage and Stevenson at the Exchange Hotel, just after their 
arrangement with Stanton. A demand for an immediate settle- 
ment of the bonds and interest to date was made, or, in lieu of 
that, complete and total transfer of the South and North Railroad 
to the Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad Company; stoppage 
of the railroad at Birmingham ; cutting out further construction 
on the sixty-six mile gap, — all of which, in short, meant the 
transfer to Chattanooga of all the interests and industries then 
centering in Birmingham. Practically, it meant the murder of 
the town planned in cold blood. Unless this proposition was 
accepted as it stood, declared Russell Sage, he and the other two 
men would foreclose. Frank Gilmer sat there, haggard. For 
months he had been working for money to meet the interest and 
had failed. He sat dead quiet for the moment, and then turned 
to the other directors. " You know," he said simply, " I 've ex- 
hausted every resource in New York. We raked that city and 
this State with a fine tooth comb for funds, and it 's no use. I 
don't see but that we've got to accept this proposition as it 
stands." 

" The deuce we do ! " Josiah Morris and E. C. Hannon and 
the other men, Albert Strausburger, Boiling Hall, Benjamin 
Bibb, and John T. Milner, all stood up. 

Stevenson lost his head and " raved," says Milner (who, with 
John W. Du Bose, is our authority for the incident), while Russell 
Sage " quietly threatened," and pointed out in " calm, cold 
words " the precise facts of ruin and dead loss staring the South 
and North Railroad Company square in the face, at every point 
it turned. 

But their proposition was rejected. Besides the hopes and 
interest for Alabama's future, the personal fortunes of the South 
and North men were tied up not only in the railroad, but in the 
making of the city of Birmingham. The meeting broke up in 
a storm just after midnight. What step to take next, no man 
knew. Before next daybreak a miracle happened! 



RECONSTRUCTION OF OXMOOR 245 



No less a power entered on the scene that night than Albert 
Fink, a man whose very size meant might, for he stood full six 
feet seven, and was " a very giant/' Kevin St. Michael Cunning- 
ham tells us ; and besides his own impressive personality he bore 
on his sturdy shoulders the entire power of the Louisville and 
Nashville system, something as Milton H. Smith came to do in 
later years. 

Nominally vice-president and general manager of the Louis- 
ville and Nashville, he was in reality, president, for besides build- 
ing great steel bridges, Albert Fink officered the whole railroad. 

" His appearance on the scene of action at this particular 
juncture/' writes Milner, " seemed like a revelation, — and it 
was ! " 

He brought with him that night the proposition that saved 
Birmingham and the South and North. It was the James Withers 
Sloss proposition. 

Colonel Sloss was president of the Nashville and Decatur Rail- 
road, and at all times was a helper and cooperator, along with 
Luke" Pryor and George Houston, of the South and North. 
The Nashville and Decatur Railroad had been organized on 
January 1, 1867, by consolidation with the Central, Southern, 
Tennessee, and Alabama Railroad companies. The road ex- 
tended from Nashville to Decatur a distance of one hundred and 
nineteen miles, of which twenty-six miles lay in Alabama. Colo- 
nel Sloss knew, as everybody in the State knew, the predicament 
the South and North road was in. He got wind of the Stevenson- 
Sage-Stanton game, and he saw at once that everything was up 
with his own road, as well as with the South and North, unless 
their move was checkmated. He hastened up to Louisville to 
see if he could enlist Albert Fink's support. His proposition 
was that the Louisville and Nashville should lease the Nashville 
and Decatur for a period of thirty years, take up the hypothecated 
bonds of the South and North, and complete the sixty-six mile 
gap in that road, thus making of the two divisions practically 
one line of railroad, running straight from Louisville to Mont- 
gomery, where, by eventually making connections with the lines 
already in operation, it could make through traffic to the 
Gulf. 

As it happened at this particular time (1871-72), the question 
of the necessity of through or interstate traffic was uppermost 
in the minds of several of the Louisville and Nashville people. 



246 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



Up to that time the promoters of the early railroad enterprises 
all through the South provided only for local traffic. 
Relative to interstate traffic Milton H. Smith says : 

" They did not anticipate the revenue to be derived from 
through or inter-state traffic. If a shipment were to be made 
from Louisville to Atlanta, it was transferred at West Point, 
Georgia. Shipments from Louisville via the Louisville and 
Nashville, for Atlanta, were transferred at Nashville, again at 
Chattanooga; and again at Atlanta, if going beyond Atlanta. 
Having but limited equipment and being constructed for local 
traffic only, no company would permit its equipment to leave its 
line. Each road exacted full local rates, regardless of point of 
origin or of destination. Under these circumstances, the road 
had to be sustained, if at all, by local traffic; and if the local 
traffic at the then relatively high rates as compared with the 
present rates was not sufficient for that purpose, the loss fell 
upon the promoters, or upon those who furnished the capital to 
build the roads. At that time the Louisville and Nashville 
Railroad Company was operating a railroad from Louisville to 
Nashville, and from a point near Bowling Green to Memphis, 
with some other branches. With its large investment in these 
lines it was necessary to secure through or inter-state traffic, and 
to engage actively in moving property between points on and 
beyond the Ohio River and Chattanooga, Atlanta, and points be- 
yond. To do this they had to interchange traffic with the Nash- 
ville and Chattanooga Railroad at Nashville. The Nashville 
and Chattanooga Railroad was also interested in what was known 
as the Nashville and Northwestern Railroad, a line extending 
from Nashville to Hickman, Kentucky. The management of 
the Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad deemed that the inter- 
ests it represented would be promoted by diverting traffic, so far 
as it legitimately could, from Louisville and Cincinnati, or points 
reached via the Louisville and Nashville Railroad to St. Louis 
and other points. In other words, it was claimed by the Louis- 
ville and Nashville that the Nashville and Chattanooga road 
discriminated against it on business delivered to it by the Louis- 
ville and Nashville from Louisville and Cincinnati, by exacting 
higher proportional rates from Nashville to Chattanooga and be- 
yond than it exacted on traffic coming to it over its long line, 
the Nashville and Northwestern." 

This state of affairs rendered the management of the Louis- 
ville and Nashville Railroad desirous of an outlet. The exten- 
sion policy had been up before the board several times before the 
Sloss proposition was received. The company had the monopoly 
of the southern business, and had grown rich from Federal trans- 
portation during the war. It was paying annually large dividends 



RECONSTRUCTION OF OXMOOR 247 



to its stockholders. But there was a disagreement as to the 
policy of extension; one half of the directors were for and the 
other half were against it. 

" Both were right/' says Milner. " A paradox it may seem, 
but the parties viewed this question from different standpoints. 
The one party said, 'Let well enough alone, and pay us an- 
nually our accustomed dividends.' The other party saw in 
the future, by extension, the greatest railroad in the South, 
and perhaps in the United States." This vista was clear and 
far. The vision of regularly earned cash dividends would be but 
a mirage for a generation to come, were the extension policy 
adopted. 

The move of the Stanton crowd now brought matters to a head. 
The Sloss proposition was placed clearly before the board, and 
pending the issue, Albert Fink took train to Montgomery to call a 
halt to the Sage-Stevenson-Stanton game, and to inform the 
South and North of the discussion under way. 

A committee of the South and North men was straightway in- 
vited by Mr. Fink to wait on the Louisville and Nashville directors 
in Louisville "in reference to an agreement on some terms of 
immediate aid." This committee comprised Frank Gilmer, Boi- 
ling Hall, E. K. Mitchell, John Milner, and Sam Tate who was 
the contractor in charge of the construction work. 

Colonel Tate had been for years a railroad promoter and 
manager. He had constructed the Memphis and Charleston 
Railroad, whose slight beginning under the name of the Decatur 
and Tuscumbia has already been related. This road was, during 
the early eighteen-seventies, as far as volume of traffic was con- 
cerned, the most important line in the entire South, and was 
under the presidency and management of Sam Tate. Colonel 
Tate was a big, double- jointed Tennessean, and uncompromising. 

The South and North Committee convened at Louisville. 
Albert Fink met Mr. Milner at the depot and invited him 
up to his house for breakfast and a preliminary " talk." Milner 
furnished him the figures as to the exact cost of, and the con- 
dition of, the South and North Railroad Company ; but the busi- 
ness future of the road through Alabama, being then an unknown 
quantity, could only be generally forecasted. Milner, being the 
enthusiast he was for the Hill Country, drew a picture that fired 
the Teutonic imagination of Mr. Fink, and that gentleman then 
held executive session with Mr. Newcomb, at that time president 



248 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 

of the Louisville and Nashville, and holding the casting vote as 
to extension policy. 

That very evening a meeting was called in the Blue Parlor of 
the Gait House. The Louisville and Nashville directors and the 
South and North committee were promptly on hand; so was 
Colonel Sam Tate. The Louisville and Nashville officials were 
still divided, three for and three against the policy for extension, 
while Mr. Fink was for it, and Mr. Newcomb was, apparently, 
influenced by his vice-president's attitude. 

Proceedings opened informally and pleasantly enough. Pros 
and cons were discussed at length and without heat. At the end 
of an hour or so the sentiments of the gentlemen concerned 
remained unchanged, three for, three against, and Newcomb 
still non-committal. All at once Colonel Tate stood up. As 
representative for the contracting company of Sam Tate and 
associates to build the road, he demanded $100,000 bonus as a 
consideration for surrendering the contract. 

The demand was a bomb, which, up to that point, had been 
strung up Tate's sleeve. It exploded in the room with terrific 
force, hitting both sides. 

Colonel Newcomb leaped to his feet, his wrinkled hands trem- 
bling. He was a very old man, and a choleric one. " D' ye think 
I '11 stand for any highway robbery ! " he cried, and declared the 
meeting adjourned sine die. 

Tate then sprang at Newcomb. The two men met in the middle 
of the room. 

Tate raised his stick as though to strike Newcomb, but he did 
not strike. He said he would not give such as Newcomb even 
the little end of his stick. Then he stated that he had already 
arranged a transfer with the Sage and Stevenson party, but 
was willing to make a trade with the Louisville and Nashville 
people. Newcomb went savage at this. Both men grappled. Big 
Fink sprang between them. Though both Colonel Tate and 
Colonel Newcomb were tall men, Albert Fink towered head and 
shoulders over both. He laid hands on their shoulders and suc- 
ceeded in parting them, saying in his broken English : " Colonel 
Tate, you stop this! Colonel Newcomb, you come along with 
me," and he got Newcomb out. Milner remarks at this point, 
" The fat was then all in the fire." 

It looked as if the South and North business were about done 
for. Major Boiling Hall attempted to appease Tate, but Tate was 



RECONSTRUCTION OF OXMOOR 249 



inexorable. Conditions were black, could not have been blacker. 
Fink came back and Tate still held his ground. 

" Whiskey is cheaper in Kentucky than water," says Milner, 
" and, for some purposes, much better. Mr. Fink rang a bell, and 
pretty soon every man in the Blue Parlor had his glass." Quiet 
was restored, and, in some degree, good fellowship. Some of the 
directors parted, in fact, feeling like brothers. Not a shot had 
been fired when Albert Fink adjourned the meeting until next 
day. He telegraphed for Colonel Sloss, who came at once. Sloss 
reported that Davidson County, which held majority stock in 
the Nashville and Decatur Railroad, would vote unanimously for 
lease of their road to the Louisville and Nashville. The contract 
was then drawn up, and at a called meeting next afternoon, the 
Sloss proposition entire was carried as it stood, Newcomb casting 
vote as Fink suggested. 1 

In precisely this manner the great Louisville and Nashville 
railroad entered upon Alabama soil, saved a sister railroad from 
destruction by some of its very own life blood, as it eventually 
turned out ; rescued the young city of Birmingham from oblivion, 
and began that labored and extraordinary course, that, a decade 
later, under the guiding hand of Milton H. Smith, was to change 
the industrial map of the Southern States of North America. 

Construction work on the South and North was at once re- 
sumed. When nearing completion, however, there was a disagree- 
ment between Colonel Gilmer and the Louisville and Nashville 
officials, in which Colonel Gilmer, " standing up for what he 
believed to be the rights of the South and North Company, in 
face of his own personal disadvantage," states Milner, " lost out 
with the new management, and trod the road into the poverty and 
obscurity in which he died. The incident was the sublimest act 
of his life." 

Succeeding Gilmer as president of the road came Colonel Sloss, 

1 On inspection of the old contracts, sent by M. H. Smith, president 
of the Louisville and Nashville railroad, it is found that Tate changed his 
demand for bonus at length to $75,000. The terms in substance were that 
his contract of April, 1869, with the South and North Railroad Company 
was assigned and transferred to the Louisville and Nashville, "except in 
so far as the former contract applied to that part of the South and North 
lying between Montgomery and Elyton and between Decatur and Elyton." 
The Louisville and Nashville company bound itself to perform all obliga- 
tions imposed by contract on Tate and his associates, and to assume 
Tate's obligations to subcontractors and other parties who furnished 
material for construction to the road. This document, dated May 19, 
1871, is signed by H. D. Newcomb, and approved by F. M. Gilmer, Boiling 
Hall, Sam Tate and Associates. 



250 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



who shortly afterwards located permanently in Birmingham and 
became identified with the coal and iron development of the dis- 
trict. Among the engineers connected with the new regime were 
Colonel Alfred S. Rives, superintendent of construction (suc- 
ceeding Major Robinson), Frank W. Wadsworth, J. F. B. Jack- 
son, Bartley Boyle, and, in a minor way, St. Kevin St. Michael 
Cunningham. All of these men bunked together in one of the old 
Alabama and Chattanooga section houses where, by the way, the 
buildings of the Crane Company stand to-day. " The Elyton 
Land Company folk lived in the other one," Mr. Cunningham 
says. " Both were two-roomed, vertical pine board shacks, bat- 
tened on the outside. We all fed in a log cabin just back of the 
shacks. . . . Coal dust mixed in the gravy . . . iron ore in the 
soup . . . and Colonel Rives, -f know, was born and bred in 
Paris ! " 

For Colonel Rives, son of the United States Minister to France, 
godson of Marquis de la Fayette, and at home in the great capitals 
of the world, life in this new, growing, shabby, wooden town in 
the stubble field of the American wilderness was indeed a con- 
trast, and he did not put up with it long. His family had re- 
moved from Castle Hill, Virginia, for a temporary stay in Mobile, 
where the colonel eventually joined them, when he undertook the 
construction of the Mobile and Ohio. His little daughter, Amelie 
Rives, whose " The Quick or the Dead " so stirred the literary 
world in after years, was then but a slip of a girl. It is interest- 
ing to note that Mary Johnston, the daughter of J. W. J ohnston, 
another one of the men instrumental in the railroad development 
of Alabama a decade later, has also become a widely known 
writer. 

Frank L. Wadsworth was one of the division engineers, and 
later superintendent of the Alabama and Chattanooga. He was 
a native of Montgomery, and eventually connected, as will be 
noted, with development work in railroad, coal, and iron lines of 
the Birmingham district. The Wadsworth coal seam is named for 
him. He was later associated with DeBardeleben, as manager 
of the Pratt Coal and Coke Company, when T. H. Aldrich re- 
signed to organize larger properties. Another division engi- 
neer connected with early construction work on the old Alabama 
and Chattanooga Railroad was James Cozby Long, formerly a 
naval officer. Young Mr. Long, a graduate of the Naval Academy 
at Annapolis, had resigned from the United States navy to enter 



RECONSTRUCTION OF OXMOOR 251 



the Confederate service. He fought on board the Merrimac in 
her encounter with the Monitor. At the close of hostilities he 
came to Alabama and was engaged in railroad construction work, 
surveying, and civil engineering for many years, latterly in con- 
nection with government work. At the present time he is as- 
sistant engineer in charge of the construction of the Eastern 
section of the Illinois and Mississippi Canal. 

As for Kevin St. Michael Cunningham, he was Albert Fink's 
favorite. He is a tall, spare, lanky man, an Irish gentleman, 
lean as a lath, but with a head and features such as would take 
a sculptor's eye. A scholar, too, indeed, as the Arab physician, 
Karshish himself, " a picker-up of learning's crumbs." Hu- 
morous, romantic, brilliant, effervescent, he kept his comrades 
in a roar from morning until night. Fink carried him up to 
Louisville, nominally as a draftsman, but in reality, for the 
pleasure of his company. " It was there, y* know, I got my first 
real chance at books," Mr. Cunningham said. " Like Eve and 
the apple, then, y 3 know, it was all off with me ! I ate ! I ate ! 
Yes, it was there my head got kinked." And indeed the rich 
scholar blood of the fellow leaped, and, helpless, he made for 
Europe again, and drifted over the old world — after the crumbs 
left over in Florence, in Venice, and in Rome. Colonel Rives 
got him back, eventually, from Italy, and Kevin St. Michael 
Cunningham took a position in the land department of the 
Mobile and Ohio Railroad. He lives down in Mobile to-day. 
He is an old man of seventy odd now, and one of the few who 
recall the earliest days of Birmingham. His inimitable characteri- 
zations of the pioneers, given in a random talk here and there, 
have been used throughout this story. 

Could the man but be induced to write his memoirs, they would, 
indeed, be pure gold. But it will never be done, for he is as 
utterly indolent as he is delightful, and exquisite, mysterious, and 
tantalizing. 

The South and North line was, at length, completed, and 
opened for traffic in September of 1872. The cost of construc- 
tion was immense owing to the heavy grades, excessive curvature, 
trestle building, and the amount of powder and dynamite it 
took to force the road criss-cross over the Hill Country, and the 
outlay was far more than the Louisville and Nashville bargained 
for. And now that the work was done, there was no traffic; 
agriculture was dead, and there was no travel. The rate on pro- 



252 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 

visions was double that of the present day. The few coal mines, 
designated by Mr. Fink as " rat holes," that had been opened at 
Warrior and Helena, did not produce in a year what became, in 
1889, one day's output from Pratt. Thousands of tons of red 
ore had been carried to Indiana and Pennsylvania and declared 
to be utterly worthless. There was hardly a saw mill going. 

"The great railroad was a failure," said Milner, "and like 
the Alabama and Chattanooga Railroad, its tracks furnished good 
grazing for cattle." The panic of 1873 found it a ready victim. 
The Louisville and Nashville could not even get credit. Every 
portion of its giant system throughout other States was affected 
by the transaction in Alabama, which then seemed fatal. Yes, 
the extension policy, so forcibly advocated by Albert Fink, now 
appeared about to bankrupt the whole system. Albert Fink ran 
across Milner one day in Montgomery, about this time. " He 
turned on me," says Milner. "You have ruined me, you fool, 
me, and the Louisville and Nashville Railroad Company," he 
cried. " The railroad will not pay for the grease that is used on 
its car wheels ! Where are those coal mines and those iron mines 
you talked so much about that morning, and write so much 
about ? Where are they ? I look, but I see nothing ! All lies ! — 
lies ! " And the big Dutchman turned on his heel, and left the 
engineer standing there. 

" That moment," said Milner, " then and there I determined 
to open the Newcastle mines, in self-defense." Albert Fink re- 
signed from the Louisville and Nashville, in disgrace, as he held 
it, at the failure of his extension policy, and he went to New 
York, where he later became an even more important figure in 
railroad manipulations than he had ever been in the South. 

The Newcastle Coal and Iron Company was organized by Mr. 
Milner in 1873. A slope was sunk on the Milner or Newcastle 
seam. The output was seventy tons per day. The J eff erson Coal 
Company was started in 1874 by Myer, Morris, and Company. 
The mines at Warrior Station, opened, as already mentioned, 
by J. T. Pierce, in 1872, were enlarged. New mines were located 
on this seam by O'Brien, Moss, and Hogan. In 1875 these War- 
rior mines were all purchased by the Alabama Mining and Manu- 
facturing Company, and improvements were made. It will be 
recalled that it was in this precise locality that, in 1836, coal was 
mined from the bed of the river and carried by barges to Mobile. 

Other coal mines in the Warrior field (all exceedingly crude 



RECONSTRUCTION OF OXMOOR 253 



workings), existing in the State at this period, were, according 
to Dr. Eugene Smith's report, at Clement's Station and Caldwell's 
Station on the Alabama and Chattanooga Railroad, and others 
in the vicinity of Tuskaloosa. A number of Welsh miners were 
induced to leave Pennsylvania by the Tuskaloosa Mining and 
Transportation Company, organized in 1873. Concerning the 
mines in the Cahaba field, the Montevallo and Cahaba River 
groups have been noted. Richard P. Rothwell, editor of the 
Engineering and Mining Journal, observed in 1873, that "very 
little had yet been done towards developing the Alabama coal 
fields, partly owing to the absence of all commercial manufac- 
turing enterprise in the South under slavery, and partly owing to 
the want of capital, and the disturbed condition of the South 
since the war." Samuel G. Jones of Alabama, observes at this 
same date: 

" The coal business is now in its infancy, yet the growth out- 
side of Alabama has been rapid, and it has attained vast propor- 
tions elsewhere in the United States." 

As for the iron industry all over the United States, sharp- 
taloned Fate sprang upon it from covert, as it were. This was 
the time when McElwain's plant at Irondale went under. 

Pig iron that had been selling at forty dollars per ton fell to 
eight dollars per ton. The two twenty-five-ton furnaces at 
Oxmoor could not be made to exceed ten tons as daily output, and 
that, with young DeBardeleben's ignorance of the business, cost 
more, as he said, to get out than it ever brought back. Labor 
could not be got and what they had could not be paid for. The 
very foundations of the Eureka Mining Company were 
crumbling, as it were. " I failed to make good," said DeBar- 
deleben, "we called a directors' meeting, and I resigned my 
position, giving my reasons that I considered myself incompetent, 
as I was at that time. I refused to accept my big salary for the 
previous year, for I did not consider myself entitled to it. 
Furthermore, I advised the directors to shut down the plant. 
Considering the conditions of the iron business in Alabama and 
everywhere else, I did not see that our furnaces could be run 
with profit to anybody." 

The plant was shut down. DeBardeleben returned to Pratt- 
ville, and the Oxmoor furnaces grew cold. Meanwhile the 
plague of cholera all at once swooped down upon Birmingham 



254 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 

like a bird of prey. There was no water supply, sewerage, or 
drainage system of any kind, and there were twenty-five hundred 
souls in the little wooden town! The black-winged thing 
brooded there, still and ominous, all the long, hot summer time. 
Foremost among those who stood at their posts, and, with God's 
priests, cared for the stricken and buried the dead, were Frank 
P. O'Brien, Bob Pearson, J. B. Luckie, and Mortimer H. Jordan. 
John W. Du Bose writes of the unfortunate town, at that time: 

" Destruction walked roughshod over the morning of its pros- 
pects. . . . Hardly had the fearful scourge subsided than the 
financial revulsion, beginning with Black Friday in Wall Street, 
prostrated every interest in the Union. Birmingham, feeling 
the shock, ceased to grow, and practically disappeared from all 
calculation and influence." 

As for the stock of the Elyton Land Company, it went down 
to seventeen cents on the dollar, fifty per cent of its cost. Once 
down, the corporation was attacked from all sides. The courts 
instituted suits to get back the funds put in to start the water 
works. Right and left the company was sued. The very desks, 
chairs, and tables of the office were levied on. Had adverse judg- 
ments been rendered the company at this time, its very bones 
would have been picked and thrown away. 1 Certain it is that 
the company, the railroad, the blast furnaces, and the town 
were barely breathing in the year of 1873. The events that 
brought it to its feet will presently be reached. 

1 Colonel Powell's dream of millions took quick wing. He resigned the 
presidency of the Elyton Land Company and went off to his Mississippi 
plantation. He returned to his city but once more. Late in the eighteen- 
seventies he entered the race for mayor of Birmingham. It was a hard, 
mean fight in which the colonel lost out. Dazed, stricken by the turn of 
things, embittered, they say, and feeling that all had gone back on him, 
he quit for good the town of his hopes and energies and autocratic ruling. 
A few years later, just about the time the Sloss furnaces went into blast, 
news reached Birmingham that old Colonel Powell had been killed. It 
was down in a Yazoo saloon, on one of the Colonel's plantations, that a 
young man, no one knew whom (some said out of revenge for an injury to 
his brother), had whipped out a pistol, and, without warning, shot the colonel 
to death. 



CHAPTER XVII 



LIFE SAVING MEASURES 1873-1878 

Eureka Mining and Transportation Company of Alabama organized. 
Exceptional rights and privileges granted by State. Colonel Troy 
elected president. Oxmoor furnaces go into blast again. Enterprise 
of Levin S. Goodrich. "The little town of Birmingham was a grave- 
yard." Biographical sketch of Mr. Goodrich. "The fools in Alabama 
are shipping ferruginous sandstone and calling it iron ore!" Judge 
Mudd operates Oxmoor plant. John T. Milner calls the men of Birm- 
ingham together. Association formed to make pig iron with coke. 
Details of organization of Cooperative Experimental Company. Wil- 
liam Goold prospects in Warrior field. Discovery and first use of famous 
Pratt seam. First coke pig iron made in Alabama. Sensation of the 
district. Louisville and Cincinnati interests assume control. James 
Thomas appointed manager. Oxmoor plant remodeled. Sketch of 
pioneer furnaceman, James Shannon. Accomplishment of steady and 
successful reduction of Red Mountain ores. Reestablishment of Geo- 
logical Survey in 1873. University of Alabama again at the lead in this 
matter. Dr. Eugene A. Smith appointed State Geologist. Inadequate 
appropriation by State. Main results of Dr. Smith's great work. 

THE Oxmoor furnaces remained shut down until the 
fall of 1873. That the chartered rights of the old 
company might be secured, a new organization, the 
Eureka Mining and Transportation Company of Alabama, was 
then effected; and the rights and titles to both the Eureka and 
the Red Mountain Iron and Coal Company were purchased. 
These rights bestowed upon the original incorporators by the leg- 
islature of Alabama were, according to Frank P. O'Brien, with- 
out precedent in the history of any corporation in the United 
States. They represented an extraordinary and practically un-. 
limited power, including capital stock unlimited, perpetual dura- 
tion, absolute exemption from personal liability of stockholders, 
exemption of all company properties from taxation for twenty 
years, barring a slight school tax, — all privileges that no amount 
of money could purchase at the present time. 

The governing body of the new company was composed, in the 
main, of the former directors: George Gilmer, Charles T. Pol- 
lard, Daniel S. Troy, David Clopton, A. J. Noble, B. S. Bibb, 
and M. E. Pratt. Colonel Troy was elected president; A. J. 



256 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



Noble, treasurer; T. S. Mount, secretary, while Levin S. Good- 
rich, old Daniel Hillman's grandson, and the only really practical 
iron man in the company, was engaged as manager and superin- 
tendent, in the place vacated by young DeBardeleben. 

To make a ton of iron at this time in the Oxmoor furnace re- 
quired 196!/2 bushels of charcoal. Goodrich reduced this amount 
to 123 bushels to the ton, and increased the output from eight 
tons to eighteen. The employment of a chemist, a distinctly 
fresh endeavor in iron making in Alabama at that time, was an 
incident of Colonel Troy's administration. Goodrich, it seems, 
was not an advocate of the "grading by eye" system, then in 
vogue all over mineral Alabama. He made a systematic exami- 
nation of the ores that fed the furnaces, and in 1874 obtained 
Colonel Troy's consent to send various specimens to Dr. Wuth, 
a Pittsburg chemist. Following the chemist's report, Goodrich 
wished to attempt the reduction of these ores with coke. But the 
company had neither the capital nor the relish for experiments. 
It struggled on, barely self-sustaining. " Levin Goodrich's ideas 
were always of a positive nature," asserts Captain O'Brien, " and 
not a matter of conjecture, and they were sought by many for the 
same reason that a man whistles when he goes through a grave- 
yard, to keep his courage up." 

The little town of Birmingham was then practically a grave- 
yard. Nevertheless, Goodrich saw a great future ahead of it, 
once they all started to making coke pig iron. " He always said," 
remarked Captain O'Brien, "that nothing could keep the Bir- 
mingham District from setting the price of iron for the entire 
world. He saw no reason why that which is happening in 1909 
should not have happened in 1874." 

Levin S. Goodrich had been in the iron business from his 
youth, as had his fathers before him. He was born in 1829, at 
the Old Kentucky Steam Furnace in Greenup County, the year 
his good old grandfather, Daniel Hillman, came into the wilder- 
ness of Alabama. Frank P. O'Brien has furnished the following 
account : 

" In 1834 Daniel Hillman, Jr., and the father of Levin Good- 
rich left Kentucky and came to Reynoldsburg, in Humphreys 
County, Tennessee, and erected a furnace on the waters of White 
Oak Creek. To this furnace, rude in design and of small capac- 
ity, the name of Fairhaven was given. The following year the 
families moved to Dover furnace, in Stewart County, Tennessee. 
Here young Goodrich remained with his father and uncle until 




Map of Alabama drawn by Eugene A. Smith, State Geologist 

Heavy outline rules define principal coal and iron counties of the pioneer 
period. The three heavy dots indicate respectively the sites of Forts 
Tombecbe, Old St. Stephens, and Toulouse 



LIFE SAVING MEASURES 1873-1878 



257 



1840, when they moved to Missouri, remaining there three years. 
By this time young Goodrich had gained some knowledge of 
iron making. He was required by his father and uncle to do 
every kind of work — from the cutting of cord wood, burning of 
charcoal, digging of iron ore, to the superintendence of the fur- 
nace. 

" In 1844 there were no rolling mills nearer than Pittsburg, 
Pennsylvania, so the owners of the Dover and Bear Spring fur- 
naces established one on the Cumberland River, above Dover. 
Daniel Hillman, Jr., and Dr. Watson purchased the Tennessee 
rolling mills in Nashville, which plant had long been idle and 
practically dismantled, and moved it to Kentucky, and began 
work in 1846, with Richard Fell. In 1848, after the death of 
Mr. Hillman's partner, Mr. Goodrich was given charge of the 
mill. Later, in 1848, George W. Hillman, who had been manag- 
ing the Fulton furnaces, was put in charge of the rolling mill, 
and Mr. Goodrich was given charge of the Fulton furnaces. 
Here he remained until 1851, when he had three liberal proposi- 
tions from outside parties to go into the iron business; but his 
uncle, Daniel Hillman, Jr., appreciating his worth, agreed to 
give him a fourth interest in the Mt. iEtna property. This 
proposition he accepted, and remained in constant control and 
operation until the furnace was blown out in December, 1854, 
because it was impossible to get the product to market. From 
Mt. iEtna, Mr. Goodrich went back to Centre, Kentucky, and 
took charge of the Centre furnace. While there he married Miss 
Louisa Ross Carter, daughter of Dr. B. N". Carter, himself an 
iron man of considerable character. The Civil War coming on 
about this time, Mr. Goodrich remained for a time in the iron 
business in Kentucky and Tennessee. [He made a tour of inspec- 
tion through Alabama, as before noted.] In 1866, in connection 
with his brother, he purchased from his uncle, George W. Hill- 
man, the Hurricane mill property in Humphreys County, Ten- 
nessee, where he remained until he located at Oxmoor in 1873." 

Handicapped as the Eureka Company then was, having to 
make iron at more expense than profit, minus a market, minus 
expert labor, and minus even the timber for charcoal, every pre- 
diction of disaster pointed out to them by Henry F. DeBarde- 
leben the year before at length confronted the company. 

James Thomas was trying to steer Irondale furnace off the 
rocks. The so-called Birmingham District, so widely advertised 
by Colonel Powell, had become the laughing stock of the whole 
iron world. " The fools down in Alabama," it was said in Pitts- 
burg, "are shipping us ferruginous sandstone and calling it 
iron ore ! " 

Judge Mudd and his two boys took the Oxmoor furnaces in 

17 



258 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



lieu of a debt due them for timber, and ran the plant for several 
months. A debt of $240,000 was now hanging over the property 
and the officers of the Eureka Company, turned fairly desperate, 
goaded by ridicule at home and abroad, made a public offer to 
turn over their furnaces to any man or any company of men 
desirous of proving that iron could be successfully manufactured 
in the Birmingham District. 

"Just here," Frank P. O'Brien says, " those of us who had 
invested every dollar we possessed in Birmingham under the im- 
pression that the wealth untold that had been described to us 
by the promoters of the then infant city would, in a few years, 
make each one of us a millionaire, saw that something must be 
done to demonstrate the truth of the many claims made for this 
region. Who was the man to lead us out of this wilderness of 
despair ? That man came forward in the person of Colonel John 
T. Milner. Colonel Milner sent out notices to 6 All those who are 
interested in the success of Birmingham/ calling them to meet 
in the office of the Elyton Land Company, situated then in the 
second story of the building later known as the Bank Saloon, on 
the corner of First Avenue and Twentieth Street. 

" This meeting was pretty well attended and was opened by 
calling Judge William Mudd to the chair, with Major Willis J. 
Milner as secretary. Colonel Milner stated the object of the call 
to be the formulation of a plan to organize a Cooperative Experi- 
mental Company, which would take advantage of the offer of the 
Eureka Mining and Transportation Company. He, on his part, 
would subscribe one thousand dollars in cash and a good sample 
of coal from three properties, to test its coking qualities. He 
called upon all others owning coal lands to take up the matter 
and do all they could to bring about some practical result which 
would demonstrate that our mineral deposits were not failures." 

Major Willis J. Milner, secretary of the meeting, reports 
that after stating the purposes and the objects of the call for 
the meeting, Colonel Milner stood up and said: "We are con- 
fronted with a condition that calls for action on our part. We 
have been crying 6 Natural resources,' and depending on others 
to come and develop them, like the man calling on Hercules to 
come and pull his wagon out of the mud. Hercules will not come 
until we put our own shoulders to the wheel. In my boyhood 
while at school I knew an old gentleman, a Jew, who by his wis- 
dom and astuteness in business had accumulated a great fortune. 



LIFE SAVING MEASURES 1873-1878 259 



The old man seemed to take an interest in me, and said to me 
on one occasion, 6 Boy, never deceive yourself, as many persons 
do. You may deceive others, but you must never deceive your- 
self. Always be sure of that. Now,' and Colonel Milner turned 
to the men, 'we are liable to deceive ourselves as to the value 
and quality of our natural resources on which we have so long 
been depending. We don't know what we can do. Let us find 
out for ourselves. We have been resting long enough on our 
natural resources. It is time we should be creating resources.' " 

A statement from Levin S. Goodrich, giving the result of his 
investigations and his positive knowledge that success would fol- 
low the experiment of making iron with coke, was read by Major 
Milner. Mr. Goodrich himself addressed the meeting in a clear 
and reasonable talk. 

The result was immediate. The organization of the Coopera- 
tive Experimental Coke and Iron Company was effected, and it 
adjourned to meet June 1 following for the purpose of hearing 
reports from committees to solicit subscriptions, and also to elect 
a board of managers or trustees. Power was given a committee, 
consisting of B. F. Roden, John T. Milner, Willis J. Milner, 
W. S. Mudd, and Frank P. O'Brien, to make such arrangements 
as would be equitable with Colonel Troy and the other officers 
of the Eureka Mining and Transportation Company, looking to 
the carrying out of the Troy proposition. The adjourned meet- 
ing reconvened June 1, and after hearing reports, a permanent 
organization was effected by the election of Colonel J. W. Sloss, 
Charles Linn, and William S. Mudd as a board of managers by 
the subscribers. At the same meeting Levin S. Goodrich was 
elected superintendent. 

About this time a proposition was submitted by a Belgian 
named Shantle, for the use of a patent coke oven known as the 
Shantle Reversible Bottom Oven, which he claimed was the best 
system known for converting coal to coke. His proposition was 
accepted, and five ovens were built by Frank P. O'Brien under 
the supervision of the patentee. 

Levin S. Goodrich, with the furnaceman John Veitch as his 
right-hand man, began at once changing the furnaces from char- 
coal to coke furnaces, also cold blast to hot blast by the introduc- 
tion of Goodrich's Blast Furnace Feeder. Many other improve- 
ments were made. 

Meanwhile, experiments with the various coals were under way. 



260 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



There were then but four coal mines in operation in the Birming- 
ham District: Newcastle, Warrior, Worthington, and Helena. 
There had been a little hole in the ground dug over what was 
then known as the Browne seam, out in the Warrior field, by 
Uncle Billy Goold. Several loads were sent down to the furnaces 
by ox team and the coal was found to be the precise quality Goold 
claimed it was. It beat every other coal then known in the dis- 
trict for coking purposes.. 

It seems that the year after Billy Goold had sold out in Shelby 
County and had essayed the cotton-broker's business in Selma, he 
" went busted/' as he says. He then renewed his coal trade and 
opened what is known to-day as the Goold seam in the Cahaba 
field. He later went into partnership with Pierce, and helped 
him open his mine at Warrior. " Went busted again," said Uncle 
Billy, and he took to the woods prospecting. " Not one dollar 
did I have, and I dug night and day in the Warrior field, some- 
times without food, for over two months. Then one day I struck 
a seam that made my heart thump for the thickness of it. I 
came then straightway down into Birmingham, and I went to 
see my friend, H. T. Beggs. He said he must take a look at the 
coal. He came and saw it, and he went into partnership with 
me. We bought one hundred and sixty acres, and I opened two 
drifts. At depth of one hundred feet I discovered coal four feet 
and eight inches thick. And good coking coal it was ! " This 
was the coal later named the great Pratt seam. 

Uncle Billy enlisted Major Peters, Mr. Pritchard, and Colonel 
Tate in the scheme. They put up a few dollars, and a pine-pole 
road was started into Birmingham. They then brought the coal 
to the attention of Colonel Sloss. 

As far as the railroad business went in the mineral district 
then, affairs on the South and North were still in sorry shape. 
There was neither coal, iron, nor lumber for the road to carry. 
Neither were there passengers. For nobody ever went anywhere 
in Alabama in those days. Between Decatur and Calera there 
was not enough traffic to warrant the operation of a passenger 
coach once a week, nor to operate more than one freight car a 
day. There was no revenue from any source. The outlay of 
money to complete the railroad was money out of the pockets of 
the stockholders. Colonel Sloss, president of the unfortunate 
road, felt, with Albert Fink and John T. Milner, responsible for 
the extension policy of the Louisville and Nashville into Alabama, 



LIFE SAVING MEASURES 1873-1878 



261 



and was naturally deeply concerned. The ownership of the Ox- 
moor property had at length reverted to Henry F. DeBardeleben, 
who now possessed the furnaces, and, as heir to Daniel Pratt, 
owned Eed Mountain from Graces Gap to the town now known 
as Bessemer. 

The experiment of making iron with coke seemed to every man 
in the district the last straw. Every eye was turned to Oxmoor. 
Colonel Sloss waited breathless. The rise or fall of the Louis- 
ville and Nashville in Alabama was involved in the experiment. 
If it were unsuccessful, then the South and North Eailroad must 
be forever abandoned in Alabama. James Thomas, too, from 
over in Irondale, watched the experiment with nerves on edge. 
Blast furnaces in the Birmingham District must be given up if 
coke pig iron could not be made. The little group of men mak- 
ing up the Experimental Company were perhaps even more con- 
cerned. Their personal fortunes, and the life or death of the 
town of Birmingham, depended on the outcome at the Oxmoor 
furnace. 

On February 28, 1876, the thing was done ! Coke pig iron was 
made ! Every statement of Levin S. Goodrich was proved true. 
For the first time in Jefferson County and in the history of iron 
making in Alabama coke pig iron was made, and of good quality. 
The Birmingham District, the Louisville and Nashville Eailroad, 
and the town of Birmingham with all its citizens saw daylight. 
It was yet to be demonstrated, however, whether coke iron could 
be made at a profit. 

Colonel Sloss and James Thomas did not lose a minute. They 
entered into negotiations with young DeBardeleben and with the 
directors and stockholders of the Eureka Mining and Transpor- 
tation Company, looking to the purchase of the rights, titles, and 
interests of the company. After getting options on the property 
they at once organized a company comprising interests from 
Cincinnati and Louisville. Colonel Sloss represented the Louis- 
ville interest, consisting of Frank Guthrie, Victor Newcombe, 
Dr. Standifer, and others. James Thomas represented the Cin- 
cinnati parties, among whom were David Sinton, 1 D. B. Fallis, 

1 David Sinton of Cincinnati had made a fortune from pig iron during 
the Civil War. He eventually acquired majority stock in the Eureka 
Company and, at the time that DeBardeleben brought about the merger 
of the Oxmoor property with the DeBardeleben Coal and Iron Company, 
Mr. Sinton was practically the owner of historic old Oxmoor. David 
Sinton' s daughter is the wife of Charles P. Taft, brother of President Taft. 



262 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



Abel Breed, James Breed, and A. M. Brown, vice-president of 
the Merchants National Bank. 

The charter of the Eureka Company was changed before the 
new parties came into possession of the property. Thomas at 
once began making changes, and during the next six months 
expended many thousands of dollars in the building of two new 
stacks, — the erection at Helena of one hundred coke ovens, and 
the building at the Oxmoor plant of an expensive battery of 
patent ovens operated by machinery. The capacity of the new 
furnaces was about four times as great as that of the old ones, 
and a much better quality of metal was the result. Furnace 
No. 2 was blown in March, 1876, while No. 1 was not completed 
until July of 1877. 

"Topping its big stone jacket," said John Shannon, who 
began working as a water boy under foreman John David Hanby 
about this time, " was a fifteen-foot high iron work, making the 
furnace about fifty feet in height. No. 2 had three tuyeres, but 
its daily capacity did not average more than twenty to twenty- 
five tons. John Veitch was head furnaceman, and my father, 
James Shannon, was his assistant." 

Levin S. Goodrich returned to the iron business in Tennessee, 
revamped the Mt. iEtna plant for J. C. Warner of Nashville, 
and worked steadily at the iron trade until his death in 1886. 
He kept up his interest in the Birmingham District till the last, 
and watched its progress with eager eyes. 

James Shannon was from across the water. Like Colonel 
Sloss, he too was Irish, but he received his training as a foundry- 
man in England at the works of the great iron-master, Thomas 
Whitwell. He married a Lancashire lass when he was working 
as a top-filler in the Barron Furnace, and it was in Lancashire, 
1867, that his son John was born. 1 James Shannon emigrated 
to the United States in 1874 with his family. He worked under 
W. R. Thomas in the Roane Iron Works near Catasauqua, Penn- 
sylvania, and he was the first expert hand Thomas had been able 
to get. " Up to that time Thomas had been working nothing but 
Pennsylvania farmers at his furnaces, and they all used to quit 
him regularly when crops came into consideration." Shannon 
accordingly stayed with him as keeper, as foundrymen were then 
called. Thomas used often to speak of his brother James away 

1 John Shannon, the present-day superintendent of the Blast Furnace 
Department of Sloss-Shefneld Company. 



LIFE SAVING MEASURES 1873-1878 263 



down in Alabama, running an " old timey " iron works by the 
name of Oxmoor. 

At length, being employed by Ex-Governor Joe Brown of 
Georgia and James C. Warner, president of the Tennessee Coal 
and Eailroad Company, to build the Rising Fawn plant, W. R. 
Thomas left Reddington, taking with him his two " steadies," 
James Shannon and Tim Ginevan. Just as they finished the 
plant, they all got caught in the ebb-flow of the iron tide of 1876, 
when pig iron dropped from fifty dollars to thirty dollars per 
ton, and put them, as it put so many, to the bad. Shannon and 
his family went to Oxmoor. 

At that time John Veitch was in charge of the furnace under 
Sloss and Thomas. They were beginning to have trouble with 
the Red Mountain ores. The furnaces kept turning out "silver 
gray," then accounted a "rotten iron." There was a limeset 
every little while for which every one was at a loss to account. 
Mr. Thomas sent for Peter Ferry, the St. Louis expert, to look 
into the trouble. Ferry came, bringing with him as his assistant, 
in August, 1878, a young Missouri boy named John Dowling. 

Veitch had been making an iron too soft for the market, and 
Peter Ferry now got out an iron so hard and brittle that the fur- 
naces got limeset again, and were worse than before. Mr. Veitch 
resigned and would not return, although Thomas sent a messen- 
ger for him and tried to persuade him. James Shannon was 
therefore made head furnaceman. 

Shannon had been doing a little thinking of his own, and he 
had discerned the root of the difficulty. It seems that in the 
continued workings at the Red Mountain mines, the surface, or 
soft ore, had gradually been used up, and the hard ore, with its 
additional lime, was being used in the furnaces, with the same 
quantity of lime applied to the soft ore. It was a perfectly 
simple matter, therefore, merely to use less lime and a mixture 
of both soft and hard qualities of ore. Putting his theory into 
practice, James Shannon thus accomplished the steady and suc- 
cessful reduction of Red Mountain ores to the grade of pig iron 
then in demand. 

From that time on Shannon was looked upon with new con- 
sideration, and was associated until the day of his death with 
many iron-making enterprises in Birmingham. He was eventu- 
ally employed by Underwood and DeBardeleben to operate Mary 
Pratt furnace; he then went to the Williamson and Bessemer 



264 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



furnaces, and finally to the Big Four at Ensley, where he died 
in harness in 1897. 

A matter of signal interest and importance to Alabama during 
the early eighteen-seventies was the reestablishment of the Geo- 
logical Survey. After the death of Professor Tuomey, in 1857, 
the survey was discontinued. But the University of Alabama, 
in 1871, again took the initiative just as it had done formerly in 
the matter of the first State survey, requiring the Professor of 
Geology to devote as much time in traveling over the State, in 
making examinations and collections in geology, as would be 
consistent with his duties at the university. 

Dr. Eugene Allen Smith was then, as now, Professor of Geol- 
ogy of the university. He was then about thirty years old and 
had been serving for three years as assistant State Geologist of 
Mississippi. 

Although born in Alabama (in Washington, Autauga County, • 
October 27, 1841), Eugene A. Smith's forebears were all from 
New England, being of the families Bradford, Phelps, and Al- 
lyn of Massachusetts and Connecticut. He is a lineal descendant 
of Colonial Governor William Bradford. His father was Samuel 
Parrish Smith and his mother Adelaide Julia Allyn. His first 
schooling was at Prattville, the town founded by Daniel Pratt 
of New Hampshire. After a few years' study in Philadelphia, 
and again at Prattville, Eugene Smith entered the University 
of Alabama, and was graduated in 1862 with the degree of A.B. 
Enlisting at once in the Confederate army, Thirty-third Alabama 
regiment, infantry, he served about a year when he was detailed 
by President Davis as Instructor in Military Tactics at the Uni- 
versity of Alabama. At the war's close he went to Germany, and 
was at the University of Goettingen and the University of Heidel- 
berg, from which latter he received the degree of Ph.D. in 1868. 
Returning to the United States, Dr. Smith accepted the position 
mentioned in the Mississippi State Survey, and in 1871 accepted 
the chair of Professor of Geology at the University of Alabama. 

He conducted the survey without compensation, as had Pro- 
fessor Tuomey, a good part of the time. An act was passed by 
the legislature, however, in 1873, reviving the State survey and 
making an inadequate appropriation for expenses. In 1877 and 
in 1879 certain additional appropriations were made, but the 
services of the geologist were given without compensation until 
1883. Mr. Henry McCalley, assistant in the chemical depart- 



LIFE SAVING MEASURES 1873-1878 265 



ment of the university, accompanied Dr. Smith in the field in 
1878 at his own expense, and undertook for several years there- 
after independent field work. There were other volunteer as- 
sistants at this time, among them Mr. Truman H. Aldrich and 
Professor W. C. Stubbs. 

Dr. Smith was honorary commissioner from Alabama to the 
Paris Exposition, 1878; special agent of the tenth census on cot- 
ton culture in Alabama and Florida, 1880; member of the 
American committee of the International Geological Congress of 
1884-89; member of the Jury of Awards at the Atlanta Expo- 
sition of 1895, and of the Nashville Centennial of 1897; and 
delegate to the International Mining Congress in Boise City, 
Idaho, 1901. 

As State geologist, Dr. Smith has performed permanent and 
invaluable work in the exploration of the vast and varied min- 
eral resources of Alabama. His voluminous official as well as 
his fragmentary reports and writings for the press have given 
to the world proof of the mineral wealth of the State never 
before known, and have contributed an immense share to the 
mineral development itself. 

The main features of the geology and resources of every county 
in the State have been ascertained by Dr. Smith, and descrip- 
tions of each county have been published. The main sub-divisions 
of the geological formations in the State were established by 
him; the mode of occurrence and general distribution of the 
most important mineral resources were described and illustrated 
by many analyses; and the agricultural features of the entire 
State also given. 

Some of the regions in which the mining of coal and iron 
came to assume vast proportions were untouched by the pick of 
the miner when Dr. Smith directed attention to them. 



CHAPTER XVIII 



BIRMINGHAM MILITANT 1876-1880 

Crisis in coal business. Troubles behind the scenes of Eureka company. 
Incoming of Truman H. Aldrich, first of the big pioneer coal operators 
of Alabama. Review of his career. Interesting points in Aldrich 
family history. Antebellum conditions as depicted by John T. Milner. 
Resume of Montevallo history. An unprecedented act: digging coal 
in midsummer. Succession of coal seams in Warrior field ascertained. 
On a still hunt for coking coal. Extent and full value of Pratt seam 
demonstrated by Aldrich. Acquisition of coal lands. Combination of 
Sloss, DeBardeleben, and Aldrich. Pratt Coal and Coke Company 
first large coal company of Alabama launched. Pratt mines opened. 
"The sound of the hammer and the saw is heard again in Birmingham." 
Gathering of forces for leadership. Foundations for city of Birmingham 
laid on cheap coal. Success of Pratt mines. Start of industrial develop- 
ment. Points of policy affecting future generations settled by pioneers. 
Operation of mines limited to the individual. Mileage and freight rates 
fixed. Encouraging conditions of Elyton Land company. Recollec- 
tions of Captain A. C. Danner. Birmingham becomes center of in- 
dustrial life of State. Policy of M. H. Smith, president of Louisville 
and Nashville railroad. His durable and splendid public work. 




LTHOUGH the happy termination of the trials of the 
Experimental Company promised daylight, as has been 
seen, it was misty weather that followed, after all. 



The progress of the new Eureka Company suffered because the 
Louisville and Cincinnati factions controlling it could not come 
to an agreement on any proposition either of policy, financing, or 
operation. DeBardeleben held on to the small block of stock he 
had retained at the transfer of the properties. Each of the 
syndicates, looking towards majority control, desired to purchase 
it. "But I would not s'ell," remarked the colonel. "I knew 
if either party got full control the property would go to pieces 
again. So I stayed umpire to keep the peace." 

DeBardeleben was then not much on the Birmingham ground. 
He was up in Jackson County more or less with Eugene Gordon, 
looking for coal. For by this time Henry F. DeBardeleben had 
contracted the fever of prospecting, — the hunger and the urge 
for the field that has never left him from that day to this ; curi- 
osity, indeed, to read the book of the ground and eagerness to 



BIRMINGHAM MILITANT 1876-1880 267 



suck profit out of the ground. He had quit the cotton gin works 
at Prattville for good and all and plunged head first into the 
coal fields. 

Colonel Sloss, too, was diving around for coal. Neither the 
extent nor capacity of the seam of coal discovered by Billy Goold 
had been determined in 1877. The coal at Helena was not 
adapted for a really first-class coke, and at any rate, was getting 
thin and faulty, and had begun to play out. Montevallo coal was 
solely of domestic grade. Up to the launching of the Helena 
mines Montevallo had no formidable commercial rival, but 
had things quite its own way, as its owner, Truman H. Aldrich, 
ordered. Sighting the horizon and foreseeing a crisis in the coal 
business of the State, as well as in his own holdings, Mr. Aldrich 
came up from Montevallo, where he had been located for five or 
six years, to the Birmingham District in 1877, on a still hunt 
for a steam and coking coal. 

The name of Truman H. Aldrich heads the list of the first big 
coal operators of Alabama. No scientific or genuinely practical 
methods were applied to coal mining in this State until the early 
eighteen-seventies when Mr. Aldrich came into the field. He was 
a graduate in mining and civil engineering of the Van Bensselaer 
Polytechnic Institute of Troy, New York, of the class of 1869, 
and was one of the first mining engineers and technically trained 
men in the South. Among his college fellows and fast friends 
was Frank Hearne, for whom young Frank Hearne Crockard, 
vice-president of the Tennessee Company, is named. Another 
Troy man besides Truman Aldrich, who was identified with the 
coal and iron industry in Alabama, was Michael Tuomey, who 
belonged to a class of the generation before. Although Mr. Aid- 
rich is a New Yorker by birth, his family tree is old and deep- 
rooted in New England soil. For three hundred years his folk, 
mainly Quakers, have been teachers, lawyers, bankers, and writers ; 
the scholar vein, indeed, well-worked. Of note in the present 
generation among his kin are Thomas Bailey Aldrich, the author, 
and Nelson W. Aldrich, United States senator from Rhode Island. 
The name is, indeed, part of the backbone of New England his- 
tory, past and present. The family was originally Amsterdam 
Dutch, and points of physiognomy have not been lost. Truman 
H. Aldrich has the large, heavy, strong-molded features of the na- 
tion and is in physical make-up the characteristic Dutch type. 
He is stubborn, too, in the right ; he is practical and square, and 



268 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



applies the touchstone of common sense to his every undertaking. 
He strikes hand of fellowship with very few, and he makes no 
friends except to keep. Quick to speak his mind, he is yet quicker 
on a point of humor ; altogether, a jolly, vigorous, robust, and con- 
structive make-up, that has been good for the times and the place 
in which his lot has been cast. 

The Aldrich starting point in this country was in the State 
of Massachusetts, where, in 1669, George Aldrich and a group of 
other men, among them Robert Taft, ancestor of President Taft, 
founded the town of Menden. Truman Aldrich J s father, William 
Harrington Aldrich, left Massachusetts for New York State 
early in the eighteen-forties to practice law. He married a girl, 
also of English- Amsterdam stock, Eugenia Klapp, a great-grand- 
daughter of the fourth Lord Fairfax, and settled at Palmyra, 
Wayne County. Here on October 17, 1848, their son, Truman 
H. Aldrich, was born. 

Ill health during early childhood led to the family physician's 
prescription of outdoor life for the little boy, which circumstance 
incidentally pointed the way to much of his life work. The 
good old doctor, it seems, was quite a scientist in his way, — a 
great collector of shells, stones, plants, fossils, and all sorts and 
kinds of botanical and geological specimens. Every day, regularly, 
he took little Truman Aldrich out with him in his long country 
drives to his farm patients. He talked so much about his hobby 
that the little boy caught it, and even began to dream about 
shells. He soon started a collection of his own that he added to 
for forty years. It was the nucleus of Mr. Aldrich's present-day 
interesting exhibit, which contains fifteen thousand different kinds 
of living shells and ten thousand different kinds of fossil shells of 
the Tertiary period. The knowledge gained in this particular 
pursuit became an important asset to Mr. Aldrich in his future 
geological ventures, and, moreover, of significance to the Ala- 
bama State Survey. 1 

This boyish pursuit, set afoot by the old physician, was kept 
up for several years, and young Aldrich was eventually equipped 
with a fairly well-defined knowledge of botany and geology. 

1 "With the small amount appropriated for the State survey it would 
have been injudicious to use any of it on paleontology, but Mr. T. H. 
Aldrich contributed, without cost to the State, Bulletin No. 1, published 
in 1886, containing descriptions of new Tertiary fossils, with nine plates 
of illustrations. This is the first installment of what is designed to be a 
complete and illustrated account of our Tertiary paleontology." — E. A. 
Smith, State Geologist. 



Truman H. Aldrich, President of Montevallo Coal Company 
First of the Great Pioneer Coal Operators of Alabama 



BIRMINGHAM MILITANT 1876-1880 269 



By the time his father entered him at the military academy at 
"West Chester, Pennsylvania, in his sixteenth year, Truman 
Aldrich had a decided taste for scholarly and scientific pursuits, 
for precise and exact knowledge, and shortly entered the great 
Troy school. 

After completing the course at the Polytechnic Institute, he 
engaged in civil and railroad engineering in New York and 
New Jersey. In 1870 his marriage to Miss Anna Morrison of 
Newark, New Jersey, took place. Two years later, deciding to 
go into partnership with George A. Morrison, his wife's brother, 
Mr. Aldrich set out for Alabama and embarked in the banking 
business at Selma. No sooner had he helped launch the Selma 
bank than he went out prospecting, and took so keen a fancy to 
the Montevallo coals that he decided to quit banking and embark 
in the coal business. In 1873 he leased the famous Montevallo 
mines. u I knew," he has declared, " just about as much about 
practical coal mining then, as a horse about holy water." 

The banking business, all over the State was then at low ebb 
in its fortunes, for the country, everywhere, was hard up. It was 
the Alabama bankers' custom to loan large sums to the cotton 
planter to make his crops and to the cotton broker to move the 
cotton bales. If a good cotton year followed, those moneys could 
be returned, but if it was a bad year, the result was invariably 
bankruptcy. 

Milner wrote at this time : 

" Alabama has appeared before the world, since the war, only 
in the tattered garment of disappointment, distress, and despair. 
... It has been asked how the people lived. Go, look in the 
book of mortgages and deeds at your courthouses, and you will 
see ! . . . Want and gaunt, haggard despair have prevailed every- 
where in the Black Belt since 1867. A sadly dark cloud settled 
then over this part of Alabama, and from that time until now 
this section continued to grow poorer. . . . Alabama is making 
her first marks in mineral development. . . . Pennsylvania is now 
the leading State in production of mineral values and will con- 
tinue to be so in coal product for generations to come. But in 
iron Alabama will be up and even with Pennsylvania in less 
than twenty years. 

" There is nothing wanting here in central Alabama but capi- 
tal and labor, and now negro labor does better in coal and iron 
business than in farming. Whilst houses, fences, and everything 
have gone and are going to ruin and decay, the poor farmer can 
only get advances to make cotton. These advances all come from 
the class of non-producers, and are made for the purpose of keep- 



270 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



ing their commissions and other business alive, and not for the 
benefit of the producer. If this business of advancing on cotton 
should stop in the Black Belt for one year, all farming would 
cease. Such is the condition of the counties along which the 
South and North road passes. Something must be done, and 
that soon. Either the army of non-producers must break ranks 
and fall to the ground and go into the fields, or somebody must 
starve in Alabama. 

" The country looks now as if it had just passed through the 
shackles of ... No fences, no hogs, no cattle, no agriculture, no 
nothing. Bald, barren, uncultivated, and washed spots are seen 
everywhere. With the record of 1870 in his pocket, an immigrant 
will stand on the edge of this once beautiful, but now dreary and 
uninviting, region, and hesitate to cast his hopes and his for- 
tunes here. The white people here now all belong to the now 
superabundant non-producing class and will work nowhere in the 
fields. They are educated and born non-producers, and cannot 
and will not labor in the fields. The products of the soil of Ala- 
bama do not sustain and support the population of the State at 
this time. The large farmers are broke everywhere. Not one in 
a hundred makes a crop now without mortgaging for his year's 
support and supplies. Farm after farm, acre after acre, is eaten 
up in this way, until now it is hard to ascertain to whom the lands 
in Alabama really belong. 

" Bitterest cup of our woes ! Darkest pages in the history of 
Alabama! A conquered people of the white race ruined by re- 
sults of a great war, struggling for bread in midst of a social 
problem suddenly given over by the mailed hand of power to the 
rule of a people but yesterday their slaves. . . . 

" But I do protest in the name of my State to hanging this 
skeleton on the wall and calling it Alabama ! Say she is sick ! 
Say she is not well, tell what is the matter with her ; or at least 
hang around her the old pictures of her former self and her 
daughters, the counties of Autauga, Montgomery, Lowndes, 
Macon, Dallas, of Madison, of Marengo, aye, and the little county 
of Jefferson, comely, handsome, and full fed as they then were. 
. . . Once the wonder of the agricultural world, now groveling 
in the dust and her children selling their birthright for bread. 
. . . Are there no more Daniel Pratts from the grand old Granite 
State to catch our flying streams and turn them into power ? " 

Mr. Aldrich's survey of this aspect of the horizon, as much 
as his natural inclinations, caused his decision to enter 
the Alabama coal mining fields permanently. "Mining opera- 
tions over the State then were pretty small potatoes," said he. 
" Montevallo, mind you, a small potato, too, like the rest of 'em. 
Why, the average carload of coal from 1873 right along until 
1879, when we opened Pratt mines, was only eight tons. If I 



BIRMINGHAM MILITANT 1876-1880 271 



ever loaded ten tons on a car, by mistake, I had to unload, for 
it was considered too heavy for a locomotive to pull ! " And now, 
in 1909, it is fifty tons to the car. 

No sooner had he leased the Montevallo mines, than he set 
his men to digging coal, although it was midsummer. The act 
was unprecedented. Not in the forty years that coal had been 
dug in Alabama had any man done such a thing as mine 
coal in the summer time ! But then, it was said, this Aldrich was 
a Yankee, and no one ever knew what a Yankee would do next. 
For " the personage autochthonic " Truman Aldrich began to 
conceive a mild and beneficent, if slightly scientific, interest. He 
hugely enjoyed the amusement and curiosity excited by his 
stacked-up coal, for before autumn, the coal was in big pyramids, 
all over the scrubby field, near the main entry. It kept piling 
up and the joke spread, for never a soul bought so much as a hat 
full. The store kept things going. Then, all at once, first frost 
came. Everyone, of course, then wanted coal right straight off. 
Mr. Aldrich found he had the corner on the market. He re- 
sponded on the instant to the demand of not only the immediate 
community and the surrounding counties, but he even began ship- 
ping coal all over the State, and drove out the English coals in 
the southern section and sold Montevallo coal in larger quantities 
than had ever been done before. 

The Montevallo mines, so long the main pivot of coal opera- 
tions in the State, now began to take on the genuine professional 
aspect, became the one real coal mine of Alabama in 1875. 
For T. H. Aldrich it netted a little income of $10,000 per annum. 
In 1909 its output is about forty thousand tons yearly, and 
it has ever been a good paying property. Having proven a success 
the property was purchased outright by Mr. Aldrich. Helena 
coal mines, looming up about this time, threatened the pros- 
perity of Montevallo, so Mr. Aldrich leased his mine to his partner, 
Cornelius Cadle, and to his younger brother, William Farrington 
Aldrich, Jr., and started out on his hunt for a coking coal. 
Associating with him Joseph Squire and Marshall Morris of 
Louisville, he struck out into the Warrior region. They dis- 
covered the Jefferson and Black Creek seams and sunk the first 
shaft mine of Alabama over these rich coals. They got coal fever, 
indeed, and continued surveys, tests, and operations at various 
points in both the Warrior and Cahaba fields. 

The succession of the seams in the vast Warrior coal field, had, 



272 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



up to that time, never been scientifically ascertained. In spite 
of the fact that coal had been dug in that field since the eighteen- 
twenties, and that the several mines already mentioned were 
then in operation, the great basin remained geologically unknown. 
Truman Aldrich set on foot, therefore, the first thorough survey 
and systematic exploration of the Warrior field that had yet been 
attempted. Employing Joseph Squire, "the lone scout," as his 
assistant, Mr. Aldrich started at Newcastle and worked south- 
ward along the edge of the coal field, while Squire searched 
along the South and North and the Alabama and Chattanooga 
railroads with instructions from Mr. Aldrich not to go out of 
a six-mile limit of the two roads, " and to find the best location 
on which to open a large coal mine between Tuskaloosa and 
Birmingham, and between Calera and Decatur." There were 
three main points Mr. Aldrich wished to determine: First, if 
there existed in Alabama a genuine first-class coking coal 
thick enough to be worked economically ; second, if there was a 
sufficient area of this grade of coal to last a long time, and justify 
heavy expenditure; thirdly, to find if such coal existed in 
reasonable distance from the Oxmoor furnaces, that would be 
available for the use of both the railroads, without constructing 
too long branch lines. The Newcastle seam was too dirty to make 
coke, and was not in favor with the railroads as a steam coal. 
Furthermore, it was supposed to be identical with the Browne 
seam, when, as Mr. Aldrich shortly discovered, it was many 
hundreds of feet below the Browne seam. 

Colonel Sloss, likewise, had an intelligent appreciation of 
what was needed, and was out in the field with precisely the same 
points in mind that Truman Aldrich had. It was inevitable 
that the two should meet. Colonel Sloss, learning of Mr. Al- 
driclr's geological investigation, in the summer of 1877, ap- 
proached him with a proposition to the effect that they form a 
partnership and continue the survey in their common interests. 
This was done. As basis for operations, $30,000 was raised, pur- 
chase of lands carrying the Browne seam was begun by Aldrich, 
and work in the field was continued. This Browne seam was 
found to satisfy the three needs uppermost in the district; it 
was fine coking coal of uniform thickness; it covered a tre- 
mendous area, and it was available for the furnace and the 
railroads. 

Returning to the Birmingham District in the fall of 1877, with 



BIRMINGHAM MILITANT 1876-1880 273 



no coal to brag over, DeBardeleben was invited by Colonel Sloss 
and Mr. Aldrich to take a look at the Browne seam and enter the 
partnership. DeBardeleben saw then that this coal was not 
only the life-line for the Eureka Company, but for the town of 
Birmingham as well. He joined, therefore, and straightway 
doubled the capital. 

As successor to Daniel Pratt, Henry F. DeBardeleben was then 
the one big-moneyed man in this portion of the State. With a 
fortune at his command he was free as the winds. The color of the 
picturesque, the tinge of the dramatic, in his personality had be- 
come by this time more deeply accentuated, and his Hessian energy 
and imagination were more lively. His ambition to be in the lead 
in something was already urging him on. He joined hands then 
with Sloss and Aldrich. Mr. Aldrich says, "he put the whole 
power of his fortune, his credit, and his tremendous vitality 
for the advancement of the company." 

More properties were immediately gathered together. Coal 
lands in the "Warrior basin to the amount of thirty thousand 
acres were bought, the price varying all the way from one dollar 
and a half to fifty dollars per acre. Uncle Billy G-oold let go 
his little eighty-acre slope directly over the Browne seam. " Sold 
it for a song ! " said Uncle Billy, " and Aldrich and DeBardeleben, 
they put the tune to it ! " The vast Warrior basin was wild woods 
then as it is to-day. Many a field of blackjack and tough pine 
trees is there, and bold, steep knolls, sharp up and down, and low 
hollows where the streams, thick with the wastings of the coals, 
run black as the river Styx. All through the western counties lies 
this coal land, named centuries ago " Field of the Black Warrior," 
for the tall Indian chief who fought the adelantado. 

The rich Browne coal seam was found, by Mr. Aldrich, to under- 
lie the vast field for miles and miles. Its name was at length 
changed from Browne to Pratt in honor of Daniel Pratt, whose 
moneys were to be used in its first large development. The com- 
pany then organized in January, 1878, was called The Pratt Coal 
and Coke Company. It was the first big coal company formed in 
Alabama. Its original officers were H. F. DeBardeleben, presi- 
dent ; J. W. Sloss, secretary and treasurer ; T. H. Aldrich, super- 
intendent and mine manager. To the camp near the mines that 
shortly developed into a town, the name Pratt City was given. 
This section is to-day a part of Greater Birmingham. 

In 1902 this name, standing for so much in Alabama industrial 

18 



274 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



history, was given to the largest commercial coal company of the 
State, The Pratt Consolidated Coal Company, officered by G-eorge 
B. McCormack, Erskine Ramsay, and H. E. McCormack. Every 
part and parcel of the holdings of the original Pratt Coal and 
Coke Company is owned to-day by the Tennessee Coal, Iron and 
Railroad Company (a subsidiary of the United States Steel Cor- 
poration) which is officered by George Gordon Crawford and 
Frank Hearne Crockard. 

The Pratt Coal and Coke Company started railroad construc- 
tion simultaneously with their mining operations. A slope was 
sunk in bowshot distance from Goold's original entry, and Joe 
Squire, Billy Goold, and Ed Lacey (afterwards a physician in 
Birmingham) were among those employed to handle the pre- 
liminary work. The railroad was finished and the first coal was 
shipped by the Pratt Coal and Coke Company, in February, 1879. 
" Then," says John T. Milner, " and not until then was there 
any sign of life in the city of Birmingham." Said DeBardeleben, 
" I '11 never forget in my life how the very week after we began 
grading our railroad, the sound of the hammer and the saw was 
heard again in Birmingham." 

But for the opening of these Pratt mines the little town of 
Birmingham might indeed have utterly collapsed. Although two 
railroads mingled their energies upon its ground, they got no 
sustenance. Cattle grazed upon their tracks. Although millions 
of tons of iron ore flaunted wine-red in the very face of the 
town, Red Mountain served as but fruit to Tantalus and the far, 
long swell of the Warrior coal fields, indeed, as the bitter, re- 
ceding waters. Although two furnaces in Shades Valley had 
made brave trial, neither had been able to carry its own weight, 
much less lend hand to the struggling town. The panic of 1873, 
like a sharp wind, had blown out of; the whole district its 
stamina. What had seemed daylight was but mirage of dawn. 
Now a breath of relief came. Under the three men who are 
always spoken of to-day as the captains of the Old Guard, DeBar- 
deleben, Sloss, and Aldrich, the town began to be builded anew, 
and gathered forces for its start in the race for leadership of the 
new industrial South. The foundations of its future were laid by 
them on a solid bed of coal and coke. " Cheap coal," said DeBar- 
deleben, " that every town needs for a starter. And it was through 
T. H. Aldrich that this Pratt coal, the best coking coal in the 
State, became widely known and opened up to commercial use." 




1. First Shaft opened at Pratt Mines 

2. Slave Quarters Old Hawkins Plantation, on Republic 

Iron and Steel Company's Land 

3. Site of Adams Dam Forge on the Little Cahaba 



BIRMINGHAM MILITANT 1876-1880 275 



Every asset the three men had they threw into their company. 
They and Samuel Noble, over across country in Calhoun County, 
were the first men who had the grit to toss every cent of their 
means to develop the untested mineral country. The three in 
question, from the beginning, conceived an outline for the Bir- 
mingham District of superb dimensions, such as would, in fact, 
have taken millions upon millions of dollars and many a year 
to bring about. 

" D' ye know, Henry F. DeBardeleben," said old Joe Squire 
to the colonel, one day in 1909, " d ? ye know I thought y' was a 
born gambler in those old days." 

" So I was, Joe," replied DeBardeleben. " So I was ! It 
took that to make the country go." 

DeBardeleben's part in the Pratt Coal and Coke Company was 
like that of Andrew Carnegie for the Carnegie Company, " to 
drive the band wagon," to work, " on the outside." He hunted 
the men to buy the coal and coke, built up a solid market, and 
got steady and reliable consumers. " DeBardeleben was always 
a great trader," Aldrich has observed, "and he always had 
the courage to buy. He was a fine promoter. He got the money 
we needed, the people, and the lands. The immediate success 
of Pratt mines for steam and coking coal fixed as a certainty in 
the minds of men the enormous value for future development 
possessed by the Birmingham District. The modern start of in- 
dustrial development of this entire section dates from the success- 
ful test of the Pratt coal. As soon as DeBardeleben grasped the 
fact that we had here a first-class fuel, he bent his energies to 
putting in diversified industries. He started furnaces, iron 
works, mines, rolling mills, and every sort of industry possible 
to promote the district and to use our coal. His energy and 
ability in this line were, as a matter of fact, nothing short of 
miraculous." 

Meanwhile Mr. Aldrich got out the coal. He stayed at the 
camp, slept in a log shack near the commissary, and managed 
the mine, the railroad, the men, and the machinery — all the 
detail work. He also attended to the surveying and engineer- 
ing, and kept up what he calls his "geologizing." He worked 
night and day. The three men all worked eighteen hours a day 
for nearly three years. They made a success of the mines and the 
money began to come in. Slope No 1 soon produced seven 
hundred tons daily. Slope No. 2 was begun and shaft No. 1 sunk. 



276 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



In reference to freight rates at this period Captain A. C. Dan- 
ner says : 

" I told Mr. DeBardeleben then that if he would deliver the 
coal on barges at Montgomery, I would contract with him for 
fifty thousand tons per annum, I furnishing the barges and tow- 
boat, receiving the coal at Montgomery, then carrying it down by 
water and undertaking to market it at Mobile. I thought the 
cost at Mobile this way would be so much lower than we had been 
paying that it would greatly increase the demand. 

"Mr. DeBardeleben took this matter up with Mr. Stahlman, 
then in charge of the freight department on the South and North 
Railroad, and made an agreement with him for a low freight rate 
from those mines to Montgomery. DeBardeleben went to Mont- 
gomery and purchased a piece of water front, where he intended 
eventually to erect a tipple for the handling of coal from cars on 
to our barges. Before we were ready to go into it, the Louisville 
and Nashville Railroad Company had secured control of the Mo- 
bile and Montgomery Railroad Company, and repudiated the 
freight arrangement entered into by Mr. Stahlman. They would 
not permit the coal to be taken to Montgomery at the low rate 
of freight agreed on, nor did they want it dumped on to barges 
on the Alabama River; but, as a compensation for preventing 
the carrying out of the arrangement made between DeBardeleben 
and myself, they reduced the rate freight on coal to Mobile from 
$2.50 to $2, which then seemed low." 

Captain Danner had the exclusive handling of Pratt coal until 
late in the eighties, when the management of the company 
changed. 

Many points of policy were settled by the Pratt mines devel- 
opers in the coal and iron business, by which mine operators of 
the present day and of the State in general are the beneficiaries. 
There was in the first place the question as to whether the opera- 
tion of coal and iron mines should be taken up by railroad cor- 
porations or limited to the individual ; secondly, whether mileage 
or freight rates should be charged for branch railroad tracks to 
carry coal, and what mileage charge for use of the cars should 
be paid in case rates were charged ; thirdly, the question of carry- 
ing passengers. The first problem, made issue of the Interstate 
Commerce law in 1907, which prohibits coal operation by rail- 
roads, was settled, so far as the State of Alabama was concerned, 
in 1880 by M. H. Smith, T. H. Aldrich, and H. F. DeBardeleben 
at a conference held out at the Pratt mines. The railroads in 
Alabama then owned immense tracts of mineral lands and were 
projecting mining operations. Foreseeing the economic mix-up 



BIRMINGHAM MILITANT 1876-1880 277 



stirring then for the future, M. H. Smith laid down the policy- 
then and there that railroads stay out of the coal and iron busi- 
ness. Better that the railroads get rid of their lands, even at a 
loss, he held, than jeopardize conditions for the State at large, 
and freedom of the industry. As for the second problem, they 
stopped the mileage business, deciding that no charge should be 
made for hauling loaded cars from the mines, or empty cars 
back, providing the connecting railroad charged no mileage for 
use of their cars. They also fixed the rates of passenger traffic. 
No facilities in any line existed then for the coal operator. 
Everything had to be built clean up out of the ground. 

At the time the first coke pig iron was manufactured (1876) 
at the Oxmoor plant, the Louisville and Nashville Eailroad, 
through M. H. Smith's action, had invested $125,000 in the 
experiment. The result was stupendous. The coal mined and 
shipped over the South and North railroad for that year, ending 
July 1, was, according to John T. Milner, ninety-seven thousand 
tons. The coal business on the line of this great thoroughfare 
continued in a growing and healthy condition throughout the 
early eighteen-eighties. " This success is due mainly," says Mil- 
ner, " to the great effort now being made by the railroad manage- 
ment to forward and develop this business." 

Colonel Sloss resigned from the Pratt Coal and Coke Company 
late in 1879, to give his attention more exclusively to iron mak- 
ing. He was always tenacious, however, as to the ownership of 
Pratt coal lands. An anecdote related of him was his threat 
to Colonel Milner, who in his zeal for a good coal chanced one 
day to trespass on Pratt properties. 

" Milner," said Sloss, " is it for peace or war you 're looking ? " 
Colonel Milner paused. He knew right well how James W. Sloss 
could fight. He figured out whether he could afford the battle. 
" Well, I reckon it '11 have to be peace, Colonel," he drawled, and 
withdrew his forces. 

Down in Montgomery, one day, not long after this, when re- 
sults began to show up all over the Birmingham District, Colonel 
Milner ran across his old friend Albert Fink, who had run down 
from New York, where he had located after his retirement from 
the Louisville and Nashville Eailroad. The big Dutch railroad 
man who had so blessed out the engineer back in the early seven- 
ties was at the depot, and just about to board the train for New 
York. He dropped his valise and umbrella and fairly ran up 



278 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



to John T. Milner. He took him by both hands : " Mr. Milner ! 
Mr. Milner ! " he cried, " I haf been only too anxious lately to 
meet you vonce more! I want to take back all that cussing I 
vas giving you once. The Louisfille und Nashfille Railroad has 
become von grand success ! " Colonel Milner says, " That was 
the last time I ever saw Fink ! " 

As the various events and incidents bearing upon this subject 
revolved in the earlier periods about one particular point, — first 
around St. Stephens and Mt. Vernon, then shifted from one 
county to another of the mineral region, and concentrated at 
length at Selma, — so from the establishment of the Pratt Coal 
and Coke Company every big event of industrial and commercial 
interest of middle Alabama circles around this one town of Bir- 
mingham. The initial meeting in Alabama of the American 
Institute of Mining Engineers in 1878 was an event of impor- 
tance at this period. T. H. Aldrich was the first Alabama mem- 
ber of this society. Conditions grew more encouraging from day 
to day. The Elyton Land Company once again found ready sales 
for its property. By the winter of 1880 its stock had reached par. 
Three years later it was called in and all its bonds canceled. It 
began to pay its first dividends. By 1884 the stock reached five 
hundred premium, and was then retired from the market be- 
cause the stockholders found it was too good a thing to sell. The 
company adhered to Colonel Powell's policy in certain lines in 
the donation of lands for municipal purposes, and the general 
outlook of the city's progress became brighter along with their own. 

This great practical development of the Birmingham District 
could not have transpired without the cooperative policy and 
stalwart encouragement to the pioneer coal and iron men given 
by M. H. Smith. His hand, back of the Louisville and Nash- 
ville Railroad management, was the great shaping force. During 
the War Period the name of M. H. Smith was introduced in 
these records as yardmaster for the old Memphis and Charleston 
stationed at Chattanooga. Directly after the war he served for 
a short time as superintendent of a part of the Alabama and 
Tennessee River Railroad (Selma, Rome, and Dalton), which 
was his first active connection with any Alabama road. He then 
returned to Louisville, and from 1868 on, until the early eighteen- 
seventies, he held post with the Louisville and Nashville succes- 
sively as freight agent, assistant general freight agent, and gen- 
eral freight agent. 



BIRMINGHAM MILITANT 1876-1880 279 



In 1871 Mr. Smith revised the local tariff of the Louisville 
and Nashville Company, and completely changed the formula, 
making the first book tariff ever used in the railroad freight 
business in the South. Instead of a sheet tariff pasted on the 
wall beside the bill of lading clerk, he devised a method that 
greatly facilitated matters, by binding all the rules, regulations, 
and classifications in one volume — a very simple device, but 
not then known in the South. Mr. Smith had previously made 
a great reduction in the rate on fertilizers, placing them the 
very lowest in the tariff rates. This was done to encourage the 
consumption of fertilizers and so increase production. With 
brick and stone fertilizers have ever since been placed in the 
lowest class in the local tariff of the Louisville and Nashville. 
He also made low rates on pig iron for the Oxmoor furnaces and 
instituted the first sliding scale rate ever made in the South for 
this plant in the early seventies. 

Shortly after Colonel Sloss took charge of the Oxmoor fur- 
naces Mr. Smith resigned for a few years' interval, to take the 
position of traffic manager of the Baltimore and Ohio Eailroad. 
He returned shortly, however, to his former road, the Louisville 
and Nashville, and in 1880 was appointed traffic manager. Two 
years later he was made chief executive officer of this railroad, 
which position he has held continuously through a period of 
twenty-eight years. 

It was M. H. Smith who gave his active cooperation, encour- 
agement, and assistance to Captain A. C. Danner, in the intro- 
duction of Alabama coal into New Orleans. Captain Danner, 
who is now president of the Mobile Coal Company, says : 

a Along about 1874 the Alabama mines began to turn out more 
coal than there was market for. Very low water prevailed for a 
long time in the Kanawha and Ohio rivers, thus preventing the 
floating down of Pittsburg coal, and during a storm in New Or- 
leans a great many barges of Pittsburg coal were sunk. I decided 
that there was an opening in New Orleans for the sale of Ala- 
bama coal. An arrangement was made between the Louisville 
and Nashville Eailroad Company and my firm making a rate 
through from the mines to New Orleans of two dollars and 
twenty-five cents per ton. A yard and office was established in 
New Orleans, and we went to work to sell coal from the Alabama 
mines there. The people of New Orleans had not then been ac- 
customed to use any coal excepting Pittsburg coal. There were 
many dealers in Pittsburg coal in New Orleans, nearly all the 
large mines in the Pittsburg district having their local represen- 



280 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



tatives there. They, of course, combined to fight the introduction 
of Alabama coal into that city. Much prejudice was. in conse- 
quence, engendered against it, some of which lasts until this day. 

" We had a hard time selling Alabama coal there, but the trade 
grew, nevertheless, year by year. I remember one sale that I, per- 
sonally, made in New Orleans that was rather startling at that 
time to the coal trade. The Gas Company of New Orleans then 
made gas from Pittsburg coal. They had used it a long time, and 
it was understood that there was no coal that would answer for 
gas making purposes but this Pittsburg coal. The Pittsburg 
people never for a moment thought that there was any danger of 
their losing their trade. 

" The president of the gas company was induced to make a 
test of the Black Creek Alabama coal from a mine that had been 
opened and was being operated by Colonel John T. Milner. This 
test in its results surprised the gas company. They made a fur- 
ther test, and then one day 'closed a contract with me for twenty 
thousand tons of Black Creek coal. That, so far as I know, was 
the first large sale of Alabama coal made in New Orleans, and 
it was a great help to the trade for our coal. We had been trying 
to sell some of it to the railroads. Of course, the railroads run- 
ning through the Alabama coal district into New Orleans used 
it, but the railroads running out of New Orleans to the West or 
to the North would not have it. Colonel Milner went to New 
York and succeeded in getting from the president of the Southern 
Pacific Railroad Company an order for a large amount of coal, 
but when it was being delivered to the railroad company there 
was almost a strike on the part of the engineers. They claimed 
that they could not run their locomotives with Alabama coal ! 
The management of the railroad company finally put up a notice 
to the effect that as engineers on the Alabama, Mississippi, and 
Georgia railroads could use to advantage Alabama coal, any en- 
gineers on the Southern Pacific who could not use it and get re- 
sults from it would be considered incapable and their places filled 
by more competent engineers. That ended the ' kick ' against 
Alabama coal from that source, and from that day until this the 
Southern Pacific and other roads running out of New Orleans 
have used more or less Alabama coal, and the use of it in the 
country adjoining has steadily grown, year by year, to the great 
advantage of not only the Alabama mines, but of New Orleans 
as well." 

At the date of the opening of Pratt mines M. H. Smith was 
traffic manager of the Louisville and Nashville and, as noted, 
outlined, together with Aldrich and DeBardeleben, the far-seeing 
railroad policy adopted a generation later by the nation itself. 
Not only did he give low freight rates to the coal and iron men, 
but he built the Birmingham Mineral Road in the early eighteen- 



BIRMINGHAM MILITANT 1876-1880 281 



eighties, and constructed branch roads out to the raw materials 
in every direction; he granted credit; he advanced money; he 
supported progressive enterprises; he gave facilities in every 
way to the builders of the Birmingham District such as no other 
railroad man in the history of the South or any other section of 
the United States has given. 

He saw from the first that if a railroad was to be made a factor 
in the development of a State, increased traffic must not be its 
sole idea; but it must achieve power, influence, and success 
itself; it must not only live and let live, but it must create, 
originate, construct, develop, cooperate, and achieve. It must 
make low rates to induce consumption and to increase production. 

u M. H. Smith is the biggest, broadest man you ever saw in 
your life ! 99 DeBardeleben has said. One and all, to a man, the 
coal and iron men of Alabama stand up for the chief, "our 
greatest man," says George B. McCormack to-day. Were one 
to present, item for item, an accounting of his work in the mak- 
ing of the mineral region, it would take a volume. Commenc- 
ing with the summer of 1884, large investments were made in 
Alabama by the Louisville and Nashville Eailroad Company, all 
of which were appropriated by and obtained through the board 
of directors, who acted on Milton H. Smith's recommendation. 
The sum spent from this date to 1908, including construction, 
acquisition, and equipment of railroads by this company, amounts 
to more than thirty million of dollars. 

Colonel Shook relates an incident of the panic times of 1893, 
when M. H. Smith called all the coal and iron men together: 
" Keep in blast," Smith cried to them. " It don't make a deuced 
bit of difference what the freight rate is, — keep in blast ! I '11 
carry the product to market if I 've got to haul it on my back ! " 

This one instance shows the sort he is. It may be said now 
for all time, Milton H. Smith is the man who emancipated the 
long shackled industry of our State and opened for it the vista 
into which it is now marching, led on by the captains of the 
present day forces. 

To him belongs the credit, not merely of his own achievement 
in making the Louisville and Nashville system the greatest rail- 
road in the South a durable and a splendid public work, but 
also, as it has been pointed out, the sound, concrete development 
of the country and the achievements of his contemporaries are due 
in large part to him. This man has been the strongest force in 



282 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



the industrial history of Alabama. He is the great progenitor. 
" There is no part of that vast railroad system or the country it 
traverses that has not been strengthened by his hand/' observed 
William L. Doan of Birmingham. " There is no man in his 
employ, from brakeman to vice-president, who has not felt the 
power of his personality, — that splendid, energetic, honest in- 
fluence! Like Abraham — he will live in his children." 



CHAPTER XIX 

A CHAPTER OF PROGRESS 1880-1886 

Colonel DeBardeleben starts diversified industries in Birmingham. Es- 
tablishment of rolling mills now owned by Republic Iron and Steel 
Company. First blast furnace of city of Birmingham now owned by 
Tennessee Company. Biographical sketch of Kentucky iron-master, 
T. T. Hillman. Formation of Alice Furnace Company. Colonel Sloss 
resigns from management of Oxmoor. "Man, why don't you build 
you a furnace of your own?" says DeBardeleben. Organization of 
Sloss Furnace Company, parent stock of Sloss-Shemeld Company. 
Introduction of Harry Hargreaves. First Whit well hot-blast stove 
in Alabama installed in old Sloss furnaces. First million dollar deaL 
of Alabama coal and iron trade. Colonel Enoch Ensley comes to town. 
" Give me something in the way of a coal mine that can knock the Ten- 
nessee Company into a cocked hat ! " says he. DeBardeleben gives 
him Pratt. The Memphis clan takes hold. Sketch of Colonel Ensley's 
life. Pratt Coal and Iron Company organized. Introduction of Llewellyn 
Johns, Jones G. Moore, Fred M. Jackson, and John B. McClary. Record 
made in pig iron. Death of Major Peters. Formation of Cahaba Coal 
Mining Company. Further achievements of T. H. Aldrich. Build- 
ing up a coal mining world. Association of Colonel Cornelius Cadle 
with Cahaba Company. Opening up Blocton and Dudley. Export Coal 
Company and Excelsior Coal Mine Company formed by Aldrich. First 
coal exported from State to West Indies in 1889-90. Founding of 
Williamson Iron Company. Sketch of C. P. Williamson. Woodward 
Iron Company's furnace goes into blast. Introduction of J. H. McCune. 
Competent and successful organization built up by Woodward brothers. 
Robert P. Porter's comments on Birmingham District in 1883. En- 
trance of William T. Underwood. Movements of Colonel DeBardeleben. 
Organization of Mary Pratt Furnace Company. Wider market created 
for Birmingham Iron. Birmingham Mineral Railroad begun. Develop- 
ment work inaugurated by Mr. Underwood. 

FOLLOWING- the successful opening of the Pratt mines 
there were started in the Birmingham District, during the 
ensuing four years, eight new concerns: The Birming- 
ham rolling mills, Alice Furnace Company, Sloss Furnace Com- 
pany, Pratt Coal and Iron Company, Cahaba Coal Mining 
Company, Williamson Furnace Company, Woodward Iron Com- 
pany, and Mary Pratt Furnace Company. Foremost among these 
were the Pratt Coal and Iron Company, the Cahaba Mining Com- 
pany, and the Woodward Iron Company. 

The first group to be regarded in these chronicles comprises 
the rolling mills, the Alice and Sloss furnace companies, and 



284 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



the Pratt Coal and Iron Company, and introduces the names 
of Thomas Ward, W. B. Caldwell, T. T. Hillman, Harry Har- 
greaves, Enoch Ensley, Llewellyn Johns, Jones G. Moore, Fred 
M. Jackson, John B. McClary, and Arthur W. Smith. The 
second group includes accounts of the Cahaba Coal Mining 
Company, founded by T. H. Aldrich ; the Woodward, Williamson, 
and Mary Pratt iron making companies, and further introduces 
the names of Cornelius Cadle, Lewis Minor, J. H. McCune, 
C. P. Williamson, and William T. Underwood. In the first group, 
it was DeBardeleben who was back of the launching of the roll- 
ing mills and the Alice furnace. Perceiving that he must have 
a consumer for his Pratt coal, he urged Messrs. Dupont and Cald- 
well and T. T. Hillman of Louisville, Kentucky, to run down to 
the now growing city of Birmingham, and take a look at the 
Pratt mines. He offered them special inducements to locate in 
Birmingham: for instance, Pratt coal, f. o. b. at $1.15 per ton 
for ten years; free carloads to start on for testing purposes on 
their home ground, and in addition to the low price on coal, con- 
cessions in the way of mill and furnace sites. 

Finding Pratt coal stood the test, DuPont and Caldwell took 
up DeBardeleben's offer, and began construction work in 1879 
on the Birmingham rolling mills. In July of the following year 
the plant went into operation, with W. B. Caldwell, Jr., as 
president, and Thomas C. Ward as general manager. Also as- 
sociated with the enterprise were Dr. Lawrence Smith and 
Thomas Coleman. The idea of the management was first to 
build a merchant mill for the manufacture of bar, sheet, plate, 
and guide mill irons, to be followed later, if practicable, by steel 
works. It was not until 1897 that this plant manufactured 
any open hearth steel. Plates were then rolled here to equip a 
United States gunboat during the Spanish War. The mills are 
owned at the present date by the Republic Iron and Steel 
Company. 

At the same time (1879-80) the Alice furnace was in process of 
construction. When DeBardeleben had secured gratis from the 
Ely ton Land Company the section of ground between the lines 
of the Alabama and Chattanooga and the South and North rail- 
roads, and within stone's throw of the terminus of the Pratt Mines 
Railroad, Mr. Hillman accepted his offer, and the two men went 
into partnership with $80,000 capital to start on. They em- 
ployed John Veitch and C. E. Slade, and construction work 



A CHAPTER OF PROGRESS 1880-1886 285 



was begun on the first furnace of the city of Birmingham — ■ 
the one destined, as it turned out, to become in a few years, at 
the hands of George B. McCormack, a celebrated landmark 
in the story of steel as well as the story of iron. The work 
was begun September 29, 1879, and the furnace went into blast 
November 30, 1880. The plant was named for Colonel DeBar- 
deleben's oldest daughter, Alice. 

The Williamson furnace later reinforced the rolling mills and 
the Alice, and these, together with the Linn Iron Works, were all 
concentrated in the one locality and gave the town a busy look, 
at its very gates. The industrial population was increased by 
several hundred; the district's payroll grew, and, the point in 
question to Aldrich and DeBardeleben, there were now steady 
consumers of Pratt coal. Other enterprises of this period were 
the Birmingham Machine and Foundry Company, founded in 
1881 by Richard W. Boland, and the St. Clair Mining and 
Mineral Company, formed in 1881, by George C. Kelley. 

The output at Alice furnace at the start was fifty-three tons 
per day of mill and foundry iron, of the brand Alice. And this 
was a record breaker for Alabama. To-day, the new Alice, in the 
hands of the Tennessee Company, turns out per day nearly three 
hundred tons of pig iron. Vice-president Crockard is so proud 
of the furnace's record that he is constantly bringing up the latest 
figures. " Hear about Alice," he will say, " she made two hundred 
and ninety-two tons yesterday — pretty good, little fellow ! " At 
the time Alice went into blast, a battery of one hundred and 
fifty coke ovens were installed. Under the expert and economical 
handling of the Kentucky iron-master, the plant soon got into 
good going, and, like the Pratt mines, it was a commercial 
success from the very start. 

T. T. Hillman was, as Colonel Shook has observed, " born and 
bred in a blast furnace." He was the son of Daniel Hillman, 
Jr., who, with Major Peters and Colonel Sam Tate, had once 
ridden horseback over the Birmingham district in the years just 
after the Civil War, as has been related, and invested then in 
Alabama coal and iron properties. Of his grandfather, the 
builder of Tannehill forge, in 1830, T. T. Hillman had no per- 
sonal recollection, as he himself was born in Kentucky, in 1844, 
just twelve years after that pioneer furnaceman of Alabama had 
died. When T. T. Hillman was barely two months old, his 
mother carried him from the old Marable homestead out to Fulton 



286 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



furnace in the woods of Lyon County, Kentucky, and here the 
boy spent his childhood and learned the a b c's of the blast 
furnace. 

When scarcely seven years old, however, the little boy was 
thrown from his pony, dragged, and very nearly killed. For 
six years he lay an invalid, with his spine permanently injured. 
Thus he was crippled and handicapped for life at the outset. 
His father and his mother devised many ways to instruct and in- 
terest the unhappy little boy. His keenest pleasure, when he was 
older and stronger, was hunting and fishing. Among the Hill- 
man household slaves were two big, kindly, black men, who were 
detailed regularly to carry little " Tenny " Hillman out into 
the woods, on long hunting and fishing expeditions. These 
men took faithful care of their young master and, when, 
perched atop their broad shoulders, he brought down his 
game, they were as proud as though they, themselves, had done 
the shooting. 

"All during Mr. Hillman's youth he hunted, in this way, 
carried on the back of one or the other of these negro men," 
said Colonel Shook, "and, by the way, he held the record in 
fishing, — he captured the biggest tarpon ever caught in the 
South." When young Hillman was about sixteen years old, he 
entered Bendusia Academy, just outside Nashville, and thus 
supplemented his home studies with a two-years' academic course. 
Returning to Trigg County, his father gave him a position in 
the office of the Empire Furnace Company. 

The Hillman brothers were then manufacturing bar iron and 
plate sheet iron, and supplying fully four fifths of all the iron 
sold south of the Ohio. The Cumberland iron turned out by 
Daniel Hillman and his brothers was, according to Colonel 
Shook, " a charcoal iron, low in sulphur and in phosphorus — 
a magnificent grade — identical really with basic iron. The 
Hillman boiler plate and the i Tennessee bar iron/ were a pretty 
well-known quality, you know." 

During the Civil War young Hillman had charge of both the 
Center and Empire furnaces. There were occasions when these 
plants were targets for both Federal and Confederate forces, the 
firing line being first on one side of the furnace group, then on 
the other. Center kept in blast very nearly throughout the war 
period, and in 1866, Daniel Hillman gave his boy, as a present, 
on his twenty-first birthday, a fifty-thousand-dollar interest in 



A CHAPTER OF PROGRESS 1880-1886 



287 



the company, and made him general manager. The firm name 
was then changed to " D. Hillman and Son." For the next ten 
years Hillman worked steadily at the furnaces, in the face of the 
adverse conditions then confronting the iron trade. At length 
he found it to his advantage to sell out, and this he did, shortly 
after his father's death. Early in 1879 he embarked in the mer- 
cantile business in Nashville, Tennessee, purchasing a stock of 
iron and hardware from his cousins, then in trade at that point. 
All over Kentucky and Tennessee there were Hillmans in the coal 
and iron and allied trades. But T. T. Hillman could not stand 
being away from a blast furnace. Just about six weeks after he 
had taken up the Nashville proposition, he went to the city of 
Birmingham, at DeBardeleben's invitation, decided to build Alice 
furnace, wound up his affairs in Tennessee and Kentucky, and 
came to Birmingham to stay. 

Shortly after Alice went into blast, Hillman formed the 
Alice Furnace Company, by combining the Hillman Coal and 
Iron Company (consisting of properties gathered together by 
his father and Major Peters), the Birmingham Coal and Iron 
Company, and the Alice Furnace Company, the last name being 
retained for all. Capital stock was increased to $250,000, and 
the consolidated company was officered by T. T. Hillman, presi- 
dent and general manager; H. F. DeBardeleben, vice-president, 
and F. L. Wadsworth, secretary and treasurer. Serving on the 
board of directors, in addition to the company officers, were Sam 
Tate, Major Tom Peters, and Charles Hillman. Improvements 
were made gradually. The first stack, "Little Alice," was event- 
ually relined and enlarged to 75x15, and three Gordo n-Whitwell- 
Cowper stoves were added. A new stack, "Big Alice," 75x18, 
with three Whitwell stoves, was put in blast in 1883. The fuel 
continued to be Pratt coke, and the total annual output of both 
furnaces steadily increased. 

By the spring of 1881 the new town of Birmingham was 
finding its sea-legs. Neither Oxmoor nor Alice furnaces could 
meet the demand for pig iron in this year. The Louisville and 
Cincinnati factions in control of Oxmoor had come to the point 
where they locked horns over the Eureka Company, and James 
Withers Sloss was getting irked. Not one dollar's dividend had 
been paid by this company. 1 

" Why don't you build you a couple of furnaces of your own, 
1 Robert P. Porter. 



288 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



man ? " DeBardeleben said to the Irish colonel. " I '11 let you 
have my Pratt coal at cost, plus ten per cent for five years." 

" Put that down in writing," exclaimed Colonel Sloss, jumping 
to his feet. The contract, to be held binding only in case of the 
success of the projected company, was drawn up on the spot, signed 
and sealed. An agreement to secure the requisite ore on practically 
the same terms was obtained at DeBardeleben's instance, from 
Mark W. Potter, who, at that time, owned the half of Red 
Mountain. With both contracts in pocket, therefore, Colonel 
Sloss took train for Louisville. Exhibiting them to President 
Standiford, he got the Louisville and Nashville backing on the 
venture and B. F. Guthrie's capital for a booster. He then cut 
traces from the Eureka Company and formed his first individual 
iron making concern in the Birmingham District in 1881, under 
the name of the Sloss Furnace Company. The list of officers 
included James W. Sloss, president; B. F. Guthrie, vice-presi- 
dent; and Colonel Sloss's sons, Fred Sloss, secretary and treas- 
urer, and Maclin Sloss, general manager. These four men, 
basing operations on the Potter and DeBardeleben contracts, 
and with support of the Louisville and Nashville, otherwise 
M. H. Smith, laid one of the foundation stones for the big Sloss- 
Sheffield Steel and Iron Company of the present time. 

A fifty-acre tract of ground, located on the northeastern 
bounds of the city, and sandwiched in between the tracks of 
the Alabama Great Southern and Louisville and Nashville, was 
purchased, and construction work on the first of the two seventy- 
ton furnaces, now called The Sloss City furnaces, was begun. 
The colonel sent up to South Pittsburg for Harry Hargreaves, 
who, with John Dowling, Walter Crafts, the Noble brothers, J. H. 
McCune, James Shannon, Stephen Stucky, and John Veitch, 
made up the little company of expert furnacemen in Alabama 
and Georgia in the early days. 

Hargreaves was an agile little fellow and a tireless workman. 
He used to " shin up " all those pipes, stoves, and stacks like a 
Jackie aloft the rigging of a man-o'-war. It was he, by the way, 
who, as agent for Thomas Whitwell, introduced the Whitwell 
hot blast stoves in the United States. It was at No. 1 Sloss fur- 
nace that they were first installed in the Birmingham District. 

Hargreaves was a Swiss boy. His father's entry into the 
cotton business, in Liverpool, brought him to England, where he 
began the civil and mechanical engineering course at Harrow. 



A CHAPTER OF PROGRESS 1880-1886 289 



Before he finished his father died and the boy became bread win- 
ner for the family. His first work was as draughtsman in the 
office of Colston & Jones, an engineering firm of Liverpool. 
From here he entered the service of Thomas Whitwell. In 1871 
he was booming up trade for the Whitwell stove in the United 
States with headquarters at Philadelphia. He installed his first 
stove in the United States, in a plant at Cedar Point, New York, 
for Thomas Wetherbee. Following in the wake of James Shan- 
non, young Hargreaves came down to Rising Fawn, Georgia, 
and put up four of the big stoves there for J. C. Warner and 
Governor Joe Brown. The following year, 1876, he represented 
the Whitwell Company in the metallurgical department of the 
centennial exposition at Philadelphia. The gold medal was 
awarded his " goods," and that incident fixed the destiny of the 
Whitwell hot blast stove in the United States for good and all. 
Hargreaves located at South Pittsburg, Tennessee, just after the 
exposition and began his career as a furnace builder there under 
James Bowron, Sr. Here he erected two one-hundred-ton blast 
furnaces, owned to-day by the Tennessee Company. 

Colonel Sloss, having been long associated in mercantile affairs, 
handled his new furnace company with an enterprising hand. His 
acquaintance throughout the length and breadth of the State 
stood the company in good stead, and helped sell his pig iron. 
A second stack followed No. 1 in 1882. The coal and ore hold- 
ings of the company were increased, and two limestone quarries 
and sand deposits were acquired. Always conservative, the 
colonel did not risk branching out, but stayed right with his 
business until he got a fortune out of it, some three or four 
years later. 

Close on the heels of these three initial iron making enter- 
prises, the Birmingham rolling mills, the Alice furnace, and 
the Sloss City furnaces, there came an incident of considerable 
interest — the first million dollar deal of the Alabama coal 
and iron trade. It happened in this way: There came to Bir- 
mingham, to the Relay House — and to the welcoming arms of 
Major Tom Peters — a tall Tennessee brother, Colonel Enoch 
Ensley. He was looking for something in the way of a coal mine, 
he said, that would knock what the Tennessee Coal, Iron, and 
Railroad Company had up around the Cumberland Mountains 
into, he said, " a cocked hat." 

19 



290 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



Major Peters did not think there would be any trouble about 
doing that in the Birmingham District. He would introduce 
him to Colonel DeBardeleben, and Colonel DeBardeleben could 
show him the Pratt mines, for instance. 

"I was living then in a little two-roomed cabin," says 
DeBardeleben, " one room of which was my office. Peters brought 
Ensley there." 

It was just about the time Colonel DeBardeleben was begin- 
ning to sight what he took for the spectre of tuberculosis ahead 
of him, and he had about made up his mind to pull up stakes 
and go West. The Pratt mines were then turning out two thou- 
sand tons of coal per day under Arthur W. Smith's management, 
for Aldrich was now engaged in a bigger coal business than ever 
Pratt reached. DeBardeleben showed the figures to Enoch Ensley 
and showed him his good Pratt coal. The Tennessee colonel did 
not know Pratt coal from Newcastle. But he had never been able 
to choke off Tom Peters on Alabama coal of any description; so 
he took Peters' word and DeBardeleben's that Pratt was the star 
quality, and closed a million dollar deal on the dot, the first on rec- 
ord in the coal and iron business of Alabama, and of the whole 
South. At that date, it created a bigger sensation than did the 
"$50,000,000 deal " of the United States Corporation in 1907. The 
first payment, a check for $600,000, was brought to the old Berney 
Bank. W. P. Gr. Harding (now president of the First National 
Bank of Birmingham) was then being " broken in " as assistant 
cashier of the Berney Bank. "That check of Colonel Ensley's 
was about the biggest check I had ever seen," he says; "it was 
exactly six times the capital stock of the bank ! " 

Back of Ensley, of course, was his Memphis crowd : Napoleon 
Hill, J. C. Nealy, W. N. Milburn, and William Fontaine, every 
mother's son of whom, in addition to Colonel Ensley, was then 
at feud with every mother's son of the Tennessee Coal, Iron, and 
Railroad Company, up in Tennessee, and deeply desirous, as 
was natural in Tennessee, to exterminate all rivals from the face 
of the globe. 

Colonel Ensley, as may be surmised, was more or less of a sport, 
and one of the few moneyed men of Tennessee. He had a fair- 
sized patrimony to lead off with, for his father, a large planter, 
had left him a million. Born near Nashville, Tennessee, in 1832, 
Enoch Ensley, like Judge Baxter's boys, and William T. Under- 
wood, was bred to the law. But he liked swapping horses better, 



A CHAPTER OF PROGRESS 1880-1886 291 



and after once getting clear of the Lebanon Law School, he dealt 
with stables and stock farms, and had what he termed a good 
time. After his first marriage he built a home on the outskirts of 
Memphis, which was called a "palace in the woods." They 
say he treated his little folk, his boy, and his two girls (Hattie 
and Lady Ensley, for whom the two Sloss-Sheffield furnaces he 
eventually built at Sheffield, are named), like "a prince's chil- 
dren." The colonel owned plantations and stock farms all around, 
and headed a big Memphis real estate concern, and the Memphis 
Gas Company. He liked to see things move along quickly and 
get results " the next minute." He could see far ahead and make 
great plans, but, as Fred M. Jackson says, " like DeBardeleben, 
he had very little patience with detail." 

So elated was he at making such a good trade as Pratt mines, 
that he promptly acquired majority control of the Alice Furnace 
Company, and also purchased the Linn Iron Works adjoining 
the Alice property. He consolidated the two with the Pratt Coal 
and Coke Company, and thus formed the Pratt Coal and Iron 
Company, with himself as president; Thomas D. Ratcliffe, sec- 
retary and treasurer, and W. L. Gude, superintendent of railroad 
construction. At Major Peters' instance additional coal lands 
were purchased, which, added to those acquired by Aldrich, Sloss, 
and DeBardeleben, make up the great coal holdings around 
Pratt, which are now owned by the Tennessee Company. 

u At that time lands that did not carry the Pratt seam were re- 
garded, so Colonel Shook says, as practically valueless, and they 
were therefore acquired by Colonel Ensley at from $2 to $4 per 
acre. He got all the lands he wanted at this price, except the 
two forty-acre tracts upon which Pratt City is now located. The 
owner of these lands declined to take less than $5 per acre, and 
that price Colonel Ensley refused to pay. Shortly afterwards, 
however, realizing the necessity of owning all the ground around 
Pratt mines, the colonel decided to pay this ' enormous ' price. 
To his surprise, when he made the offer, it was declined, the 
owner saying he would not take less than $10 per acre. This 
Colonel Ensley refused outright to pay, but about twelve months 
later he went back and offered $10 per acre for the land. This 
time the owner said he wanted $25 an acre, and at this point 
negotiations were broken off. The land was eventually sold out 
in lots, and is now the heart and center of Pratt City." 

Colonel Ensley then planted himself right down in Alabama, 
resolved "to do up the Tennessee Company or bust." He 



292 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



ordered four more slopes sunk at Pratt, one of which he named 
the Laura Ensley, after his wife. His chief mining engineer 
was a Welshman named Llewellyn Johns, who had been in charge 
of the engineering work at Pratt, under DeBardeleben, for a 
short while. J ohns was born, as he says, " atop of a coal mine," in 
1844, at Ponty Prodd, Glamorganshire, Wales, the home county 
of Giles Edwards. After an interim at an English military acad- 
emy, he returned to Wales, to work in the coal mines. Like Billy 
Goold, he saw no future for a miner in Great Britain, and left 
Wales for the United States. The young man wandered over 
the middle Atlantic States, working his way along, and finally 
struck for the West. His adventures in Nebraska, Nevada, and 
Montana are a book in themselves. Returning to Pennsylvania, 
he worked in the Diamond mines near Scranton, and in other lo- 
calities for various members of the Thomas family, through 
whom he was induced to " try his luck in Birmingham." He 
arrived in the Birmingham camp on a spring morning, in 1872, 
without one cent in his pocket. He approached a man who was 
busy laying out claims and asked for a job — " something to earn 
breakfast money." As it turned out, the man was Captain Frank 
P. O'Brien, a son of Llewellyn Johns' former boss, at the Dia- 
mond mines, in Scranton. The warm-hearted young Irish 
" captain " was so delighted to learn this, that he at once went 
shares on breakfast, bunk and board with the young Welsh 
miner. Johns then worked in and around Birmingham as a 
carpenter and miner, and at the Warrior coal mines, under 
Pierce. He then went to Rising Faun, Georgia, but returned 
in 1877, to Birmingham, when through James Thomas, he se- 
cured the position of superintendent of Helena coal mines, near 
Oxmoor, after which he went to Pratt. He was eventually identi- 
fied as mining engineer with the Tennessee Company, the 
DeBardeleben Coal and Iron Company, and the Republic Iron and 
Steel Company. The coal mine " Johns," and the blast furnace, 
" King John," both now owned by the Tennessee Company, were 
named for him. The colonel, now retired from business, pre- 
serves, .to this day, innumerable mementoes of this wandering 
past and has in glass cases, at his Birmingham home, "The 
Elms," the scouting and Indian suits once worn by him, as also the 
uniform of his school days. Gifted with a certain native-born 
eloquence, an enthusiasm distinctly foreign to the average Ameri- 
can business man, and an energy unquenchable, Llewellyn J ohns 



1. Old Helena Coal Mimes, Slope No. 2, 1878 

2. Lump of Coal sent to New Orleans Exposition by Pratt 

Coal and Iron Company 
Figures from left to right: Col. Enoch Ensley, L. W. Johns, 
Joshua Collins, William Gude 

3. Progress of the Exposition Party 



A CHAPTER OF PROGRESS 1880-1886 



293 



has ever been a marked character of the Alabama mineral 
regions, — possibly its most unique feature. 

In the old days at Pratt mines his desire to " go ahead 99 quite 
matched Colonel Ensley's. Energetic work went on at all the 
properties. Colonel Ensley improved the Alice furnaces, and 
set up race track tactics. Big Alice, for instance, was put to 
racing Little Alice, and both were trained to try for the run 
over Sloss. Big Alice, as a matter of fact, finally broke the 
record in pig iron output, under Colonel Ensley's management, 
making one day, early in 1886, one hundred and fifty tons of 
pig iron, the largest daily run of any single furnace of the 
Southern States recorded up to that time. When she passed into 
the hands of the enemy, the Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad 
Company, as, indeed, that bitter consummation came in time to 
be, her output averaged from one hundred and twenty-five to 
one hundred and fifty tons per day. 

The coke ovens of the Pratt company were also increased in 
Ensley's administration. In June of 1885, he employed Jones 
G. Moore to superintend this work. Moore was a young man, 
then but twenty-three years old. He had worked with the New- 
castle Coal and Iron Company, the Coalburg Coal and Coke 
Company, and, for a time, with Aldrich and DeBardeleben. He 
was a country boy, born and raised on a farm in Macon County, 
Alabama, near Tuskegee. But he got fairly tired of cotton, corn, 
and mules, and essayed running a steam grist mill. Finding that 
he had a vocation for the coal business, he left the country school 
and his father's farm to work under John T. Milner; then he 
went over to Pratt mines. Step by step he mounted with the 
Alabama coal business, and to-day he is manager of mines of the 
Sloss-Shefiield Steel and Iron Company. Other young men of 
the Pratt company in Ensley's service, and later to be associated 
in the development of the Birmingham District, besides Arthur 
W. Smith and Jones G. Moore, were Fred M. J ackson and J ohn B. 
McClary. 

Mr. Jackson was the timekeeper of the Pratt Coal and Iron 
Company and assistant bookkeeper to Dan Smith. He was an 
Alabama boy, the son of Dr. R. D. Jackson, a surgeon of the Con- 
federate army. He was born September 1, 1859, on a farm in 
Perry County. Following the close of the war, Dr. Jackson took 
his family to Selma, and in 1868 bought a plantation nine 
miles out of the town. Like Jones G. Moore, Fred Jackson had 



294 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



short-cut terms, "in between crops/' at the county school, and 
rounded up with a one-year term at the Summerfield high school, 
after which, in 1879, he started in the cotton business at Selma. 
Hearing so much talk of the Birmingham District, young Jack- 
son soon changed from cotton to coal, and in 1881 entered the 
service of the Pratt Coal and Iron Company. He remained with 
the company throughout Ensley's administration, and served as 
cashier during the early regime of the Tennessee Company. 
He left the trade for a time to go into the business of mining 
supplies and wholesale groceries, and not until 1890, when T. T. 
Hillman rebuked him for leaving his profession, did he step back 
into the ranks, to become, as shall presently be told, founder and 
organizer of the Alabama Consolidated Coal and Iron Com- 
pany, with T. G. Bush and others. 

John McClary became assistant superintendent of the Pratt 
Coal and Iron Company, and was later president of the Ensley 
Manufacturing Company. Although he was a Tennesseean, as was 
Ensley, he and the colonel got on fairly well. McClary, like 
Jones G. Moore, had worked all around the mines, turning his 
hand to whatever there was to do. He was a McMinn County 
boy, born in 1857, and started his career in the Alabama news- 
paper business, but soon came to the point when he saw he must 
dig coal for a living. He went to the Helena mines in 1873, 
and after a turn with the shovel and pick, was made tally boss 
and timekeeper. Then he went to Oxmoor where Colonel Sloss 
made him outside manager. From Oxmoor he went over to 
Pratt, and Arthur Smith took him into the office together with 
young Fred Jackson. Mr. McClary married Lucy Brittan, who 
was the daughter of General P. H. Brittan, founder of the 
Montgomery Advertiser, and secretary of State of Alabama. 

Among the firm friends made by Colonel Enoch Ensley in 
Birmingham were Ben Roden and John David Hanby. And 
both men thought the world and all of the Tennessee colonel. 
" He was a worker if ever there was one," Mr. Roden said, " yet 
he told me, that up to the time he came to Birmingham, 
he had never done a lick of work in his life. Yet he had one of 
the clearest brains I ever saw in a man, and a mental force and 
energy you don't often come across." 

Captain Hanby says Colonel Ensley was " the freest man with 
his money I ever saw. Always setting 'em up ! And he never let 
the widows and orphans see hard times. He was as generous 



A CHAPTER OF PROGRESS 1880-1886 295 



as the day is long ! " Shortly after Colonel Ensley had consoli- 
dated his various properties, his friend, the great pioneer pros- 
pector, old Major Tom Peters, went up to the Louisville Ex- 
position to take charge of a large exhibit of minerals and other 
resources of Alabama, made by the railroads. Here the major 
was taken suddenly ill, and died. His funeral took place in 
Birmingham. Every house of business in the town was closed, 
and a great procession followed his body to the grave. Miss 
Duffie writes : 

"Viewed in the calm and impartial light of future history, 
Major Peters' character and career will stand clearly outlined as 
heroic, tender, and beautiful. His story even now reads more like 
a romance than the actual facts, and those who knew him as well 
as I did, and knew the intense piety and unselfishness of his na- 
ture and his numberless liberal deeds of thoughtfulness, can but 
believe that ( after life's fitful fever he sleeps well.' " 

Following Enoch Ensley's million-dollar trade, the Cahaba 
Coal Mining Company was organized by Truman H. Aldrich. 
Combining an area of more than twelve thousand acres of coal 
lands in the South Cahaba coal fields, in the counties of Jeffer- 
son, Bibb, and Shelby, and having a capital of one million dollars, 
the organization of this — the greatest coal company of that 
period in the South — created another sensation. Pratt coal 
mines soon " played second fiddle." The board of directors of 
Cahaba Company comprised T. H. Aldrich, W. S. Gurnee of 
New York, Samuel Noble and A. L. Tyler of Anniston, Alabama, 
and Cornelius Cadle. Mr. Aldrich was president and treasurer; 
Colonel Cadle, vice-president and general manager. Peter B. 
Thomas (to-day part owner and manager of Montevallo Coal 
Company, in conjunction with T. H. Aldrich) was then em- 
ployed as mine superintendent, and Lewis Minor of Connellsville, 
Pennsylvania, was general superintendent of coke ovens. 

Ever since the early eighteen-seventies, Truman Aldrich had 
been buying coal lands with the surplus earnings accumulating 
from his Montevallo properties. When he resigned from the 
Pratt Coal and Coke Company, in 1881, he owned several thou- 
sand acres of coal lands along the Cahaba River, which he had 
prospected himself. 

After first gathering together severaj thousand acres in Jeffer- 
son County, which he named the Henry Ellen properties, after 
DeBardeleben and his wife, Ellen Pratt DeBardeleben, Mr. 



296 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



Aldrich closed a $400,000 deal with DeBardeleben, and then 
began the building of his new coal mining world in the Cahaba 
region. 

Colonel Cadle, who was formerly associated with Mr. Aldrich 
at Montevallo mines, had also been engaged in purchasing sec- 
tions of iron ore and coal lands in this locality, with a backing 
of several Iowa capitalists. Iowa is Cadle's home State. Al- 
though born in New York City, May 22, 1836, Cornelius Cadle 
was reared at Muscatine, Iowa. During the Civil War he 
served with the Eleventh Iowa Volunteer Infantry, and partici- 
pated in all the battles and campaigns of the army of the Ten- 
nessee, from the battle of Shiloh to the end of the war. He was 
wounded at the seige of Vicksburg. After the war Colonel Cadle 
was connected, for a time, with the Freedman's Bureau, and in 
1867 was appointed receiver of a national bank at Selma, Ala- 
bama, where he eventually took up his residence. In 1873 he 
became connected with the banking house of George A. Morrison 
and Company, with which Mr. Aldrich was originally connected. 
He purchased an interest in 1876 in the Montevallo coal mine 
and resided there for several years. In 1881 he sold out, and 
spent a year in Colorado in the San Juan mining district, re- 
turning to Alabama in 1882, where he joined Mr. Aldrich in the 
organization of the great Cahaba Company, whose properties 
belong to-day to the Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company. 
Colonel Cadle served as vice-president and manager of this 
company until the consolidation in 1892. In March 1895, the 
colonel was appointed chairman of the Shiloh National Military 
Commission, and still holds this position.. He also holds a 
responsible position with the Ohio commandery of the "Loyal 
Legion " of the United States. 

The first step of the Cahaba Company managers, back in 

1883, was the building of their transportation line to connect 
with the Alabama Great Southern, the old Alabama and Chatta- 
nooga once run by the " Yankee " Stanton. A railroad was con- 
structed from Woodstock, where Giles Edwards then had his 
blast furnace in operation, to a portion of their mining property 
named Blocton by Mr. Aldrich. The first seam at this celebrated 
group of mines was opened and coal shipped in the spring of 

1884. Eight hundred men. were employed; all told, seven mines 
were opened on the Woodstock and Underwood seams, and a coke 
oven plant constructed. Before the decade was out the output 



A CHAPTER OF PROGRESS 1880-1886 297 



totaled several million of tons. The company sold coke to Ox- 
moor and Anniston, and coal eventually to the Pioneer Company. 
The mines were the leading producers of the district all during 
the eighteen-eighties, and the company furnished coal to all ex- 
cepting one of the railroads to New Orleans. The Southern 
Pacific Railroad alone used five hundred tons daily between New 
Orleans and San Antonio. The entire body of company lands, in j 
all, 1,238,031 acres, was valuable for coal, barring some 635 acres 
of " surface." It was the best and largest area of good coal land 
ever gotten together in the State up to that time and is consid- 
ered the most important achievement of Mr. Aldrich's career as 
a mining man. This was, in fact, the most active period of his 
work in the Alabama coal business. Simultaneously with his 
Bloc ton operations, which mines are now owned by the Tennessee 
Company, he opened the original Dudley properties in Tuska- 
loosa County, part of which are now owned by the Alabama Con- 
solidated Coal and Iron Company, officered by Jos. Hoadley and 
Guy R. Johnson, and part by the Big Sandy Iron and Steel Com- 
pany, officered by William P. Pinckard. 

In 1888 Mr. Aldrich formed the Export Coal Company and 
Excelsior Coal Mine Company, and also opened two mines in 
Shelby County, near Gurnee. In this same year the Louisville 
and Nashville, which had extended a branch from Blue Creek 
to Woodstock, concluded to build a track from Helena south- 
west to Blocton. The East Tennessee, Virginia, and Georgia 
Railroad, now a part of the Southern system, decided on the 
same route. The railroad war eventually wound up with the 
result of a joint track to Gurnee, Blocton, and Bessemer. The 
Brierfield, Blocton, and Birmingham line, the " old B. B. and 
B.," now also belonging to the Southern, was completed from 
Gurnee Junction to Bessemer by Mr. Aldrich and J. W. Worth- 
ington. This track comprised one hundred miles in all. 

The Excelsior Company properties were eventually consolidated 
by Mr. Aldrich with those of his Cahaba Company. His Export 
Coal Company was the first company to introduce Alabama coal to 
ports in the West Indies, Mexico, South America, and Central 
America. W. D. Munson of New York, a land holder in Cuba 
and a large ship-owner (operating a steamship line between New 
York and Rio Janeiro), was president; T. H. Aldrich, vice- 
president, M. P. Canfield, secretary and treasurer. The project 
was promoted by Mr. Aldrich and several of the stockholders of 



298 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



the Cahaba Company at considerable expense. "The natural 
outlet of the Cahaba Company was to the South," Mr. Aldrich 
has observed. " Coal was then being mined all the way to the 
north of us, but none to the south. The export business grew 
out of the necessities for new markets." No Alabama coal was 
exported at this time except from the mines of the Cahaba 
Company. 

President M. H. Smith secured an appropriation of one hun- 
dred thousand dollars from the Louisville and Nashville, to erect 
a wharf for the Export Company at Pensacola. The company 
owned and operated two ocean-going tugs, six barges, two 
schooners, and two steamships. In 1890 they sent out fifty thou- 
sand tons of Blocton coal and brought back tropical products. 
" It was a reciprocal business straight along," says Mr. Aldrich. 
In 1891 he took as his guests a large party of representative coal 
and iron men to Pensacola to view the naval drill, and " inci- 
dentally " to examine the subject of the export trade from that 
point in its relation to Birmingham and the mineral region. 
One of the members of this party was General Rufus N. Rhodes, 
editor of the Birmingham News, and he exploited the export 
business for Alabama coal far and wide. 

" The work of development went on, and as the country grew 
so did the city of Birmingham," wrote John T. Milner in 1889. 
" The Louisville and Nashville Railroad did not stop. She ex- 
tended her branches and our markets in every direction. She 
went to New Orleans. She went to Pensacola. She began trad- 
ing with the West Indies. She has placed her branches all over 
our country; other railroads cut but little figure. The Louis- 
ville and Nashville is now not only Birmingham, but Alabama. 
Without the aid of the Louisville and Nashville the South and 
North would never have become the factor it is in the State's 
development, and progress would have been staved off a century. 
... As day after day the leaves from the sealed book of Nature 
are turned over by DeBardeleben and Hillman, Ensley and Aid- 
rich, it can be seen in letters imprinted on the sky all over the 
world that the Birmingham District has no parallel on earth." 

The Williamson Iron Company was organized by C. P. 
Williamson in July, 1885. Mr. Williamson, who was the pro- 
prietor and operator of the Jefferson foundry, was one of 
the few experienced iron workers then in the district. His 
original concern began in the spring of 1879 as a small 
shop, and carrying in the early eighties one hundred and 
fifty men on its pay roll, was merged by its founder into 



A CHAPTER OF PROGRESS 1880-1886 299 



his furnace company. C. P. Williamson, born at New Rich- 
mond, Ohio, 1843, was the son of a river engineer. He entered 
the shops of the New Albany and Chicago Railroad in 1858 and 
got his first training as a mechanic. At the outbreak of the 
Civil War he entered the Union forces, serving with the army 
of the Potomac and reaching rank of lieutenant. He carried on 
his trade as an iron worker in various quarters after the war's 
close. He became superintendent of a firm of architectural iron 
workers located at Louisville. This firm chanced to get old 
Captain Linn's order to do the iron work on "Linn's Folly." 
In this way Mr. Williamson early became identified with this 
district. He accepted the management of the Linn Iron Works 
in 1875, and branched out later into independent organizations. 

Among other men connected at this decade with coal and iron 
interests in various minor ways, or trade closely allied to coal 
and iron, are recorded the names of Charles W. Wood, Isaac 
Price, Elbridge Gerry Stevens, Samuel H. Lighton, James C. 
Long, Patrick Byrne, G. H. Harris, P. L. Rogers, and Arthur 
Owen Wilson. 

The Woodward Iron Company's first furnace went into blast 
August 17, 1883. The company had been organized in the fall 
of 1881 with W. H. Woodward as president, and J. H. Woodward 
as secretary and treasurer. J. N. Vance, president of the River- 
side Iron Works at Wheeling, West Virginia, was associated with 
the Woodward brothers on the board of directors. The furnace 
site, some twelve miles southwest of Birmingham, together with 
contiguous coal and ore lands, was purchased at the time the 
Thomas family of Pennsylvania first invested in this district, 
which was shortly after the Civil War. In the early days of 
Jefferson County the first little log-cabin school of Jones Valley 
was located on this property, which was acquired by the Jordan 
family in the eighteen-thirties. 

The Woodward brothers bought several hundred acres from 
Fleming Jordan and took up their quarters in the comfortable, 
one-story old farmhouse that, with big eaves and vine-covered 
porches, drowsed under the shadow of the oak grove there. There 
were gardens all about it — kitchen garden and flower garden — 
as well as a winter house for flowers. And it was in Mrs. 
Jordan's rose garden, just one hundred yards away from the 
porches of the rambling old house, that Woodward Furnace No. 1 
was built. 



300 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 

The Woodwards brought down from West Virginia one of 
their own men, John H. McCune, to superintend the construc- 
tion of their furnaces. Mr. McCune was then acting manager 
of the Riverside Furnace and the Wheeling Iron and Nail Works 
of Wheeling, West Virginia. He is a Grand Army veteran. 
His experiences from the time he quit his father's farm in 
Pennsylvania to go to the wars were various. He enlisted in the 
Ninth Pennsylvania Reserves, the regiment that went through 
first and second Fredericksburg, and second Manasses. Here 
young McCune was captured, but, escaping, he rejoined his regi- 
ment in time to fight at Gettysburg. After the battles he went 
up to the coal works of Allegheny and the Eliza furnaces of 
Pittsburg, and started out as a carpenter. He began to take 
contracts, and superintended the building of various iron works 
throughout Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia. After com- 
pleting the first Woodward furnace in the Birmingham District, 
he superintended the Sloss furnaces, and for a time managed the 
Henry Ellen Coal Mines. Then he returned to the Woodward 
Company to erect their second furnace. He became eventually 
superintendent of this company. 

Later, Mr. McCune organized the McCune Iron Company, 
which makes a specialty of blast furnace construction. It is 
capitalized at $75,000. Mr. McCune is president, W. H. Wood- 
ward, vice-president, and Charles C. Glidden, secretary and 
treasurer. 

The Woodward Iron Company made good from the outset. 
According to DeBardeleben, they built up a wonderful organiza- 
tion, and outclassed all competitors by their original methods. 
Colonel Shook says : " The property of the Woodward Iron Com- 
pany is the best of its size in the world and the best controlled. 
It is the only company in Alabama that mines its own coal, ore, 
and limestone, and hauls all its products on its own railroad 
without having to pay one cent freight." Its raw materials are 
in such close proximity to its furnaces that the company has been 
enabled to operate its plant with more commercial economy than 
has any other concern in the State. Their pig iron is made at 
a lower actual cost than by any producer anywhere else in the 
world. From the beginning this company pursued a non-specu- 
lative policy. It went in for legitimate development work on a 
slow, steady scale, and played what they call "the lone hand." 
Their business, simply that of making pig iron, has been the one 



A CHAPTER OF PROGRESS 1880-1886 301 



object before them from 1883, when No. 1 went into blast, until 
now. In 1886 the capital stock of this company was increased 
from $450,000 to $1,000,000. J. H. Woodward became presi- 
dent, and F. H. Armstrong, secretary and treasurer. To-day, 
in the twenty-sixth year of its existence, the Woodward Iron 
Company has a capitalization of $3,000,000. Two thousand men 
are on its pay roll, and the town of Woodward is a growing com- 
munity. Everything- — furnaces, coal and ore mines, and lime- 
stone quarries — are within a radius of a few miles. Their coal 
mines and coke-oven plants are a mile north of the furnaces, 
and their ore mines two miles south. 

In the early part of 1883 Robert P. Porter 1 visited Alabama 
in his inspection tour of the iron-making districts of the South. 
Every fact in his report is of significant interest and value in the 
light of present day operations. Certain extracts from his New 
York Press story, dated from Birmingham, are as follows : 

" Perhaps there is no better illustration of the variation in the 
estimated cost of making pig iron with coke than in the iron dis- 
trict, the center of which I am writing from. Of the advantages 
here Mr. Abram S. Hewitt says : i This region of Alabama is un- 
questionably the most interesting in the United States with ref- 
erence to the interests of iron manufacture in this country. It 
is, in fact, the only place on the American continent where it is 
possible to make iron in competition with the cheap iron of Eng- 
land. The cheapest place until now on the globe for manufac- 
turing iron is the Cleveland region, Yorkshire, England. The 
distance from the coal to the ore averages them a distance of 
twenty miles, while in Alabama the coal and the ore are in many 
places within half a mile of each other/ Again the same author- 
ity says : ' I think this will be a region of coke-made iron on a 
grander scale than has ever been witnessed on the habitable 
globe.' 

" Mr. Lothian Bell, an eminent English authority, after com- 
pleting his tour of inspection of the Birmingham district, said: 
6 1 will not say that Birmingham will furnish the world with iron, 
but I will say that she will eventually dictate to the world what 
the price of iron shall be.' . . . These are both Free-trade au- 
thorities, but no one who has seen this region disputes its advan- 
tages, though Mr. Bell's statement as to dictating the cost of 

1 Robert Percival Porter, editor of Engineering Supplement to London 
Times, London, England. Mr. Porter was director of the 11th United 
States Census; special fiscal, and tariff commissioner of President Mc- 
Kinley to Cuba [1898]; founder of the New York Press and Chicago Inter- 
Ocean; and one of the most widely known writers on economic subjects 
in the world. His article on " The New South," quoted herein, is not gen- 
erally available and has been loaned for this work by James Bowron of 
Birmingham. 



302 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



iron may be seriously questioned. Yet when the history of iron 
manufacturing is examined, not only in this, but in all the South- 
ern iron districts, we are confronted with a list of dismal failures, 
and cheap iron seems a myth. In the course of this investigation 
I have visited what may be termed the six principal coke-made 
iron producing districts of the South, which may be classified as 
follows : 

" 1. The Chesapeake and Ohio districts, including the Vic- 
toria, Longdale, Lowmoor, and Callie furnaces. 

" 2. The Roanoke, or Southwest Virginia District, including 
Milnes, Roanoke, and the future New River and Cripple Creek 
District. 

" 3. The Cranberry ore mines, which bid fair to become 
important. 

"4. The Tennessee River districts, including the Rockwood, 
Chattanooga, South Pittsburg, and Cowan furnaces. 

" 6. The Birmingham District, including seven large coke 
furnaces in this immediate neighborhood, which, with slight vari- 
ations, are dependent upon the same natural conditions. In the 
course of the inquiry we have to face, beside the discrepancy in 
the estimated cost of making iron, the anomaly of millions of 
dollars of new capital and fresh vigor constantly being put into 
iron making, within sight, as it were, of colossal failures. 

" We have also to face, on the one hand, statements that iron 
can be made at a cost not higher than the cost of production in 
the Cleveland (England) district or of Scottish pig iron, and on 
the other hand that the Tecumseh, Alabama, furnace could barely 
compete with Scottish pig as far inland as Rome, Georgia, with 
a duty of seven dollars in favor of the Alabama furnace, to say 
nothing of freight. 

" Williard Warner, an experienced charcoal iron manufacturer 
of Alabama and former United States senator, admitted not long 
since before Senator Blair's Labor and Education Committee, 
when in session at Birmingham, that there had been since the war 
more capital sunk in Alabama than there had been dividends 
paid in the iron industry. Samuel Noble, of Anniston, Alabama, 
in a recently published statement, pointed out, in rather vivid 
language, the history of the iron furnaces in Alabama, Georgia, 
and Tennessee for the past twelve years. He claimed that the 
men who have started out to make cheap iron have generally 
either failed or sold out at a loss. ' The fact is,' he says, e you 
can go into the history of iron making in Alabama for the past 
twelve years and find it strewn with the wrecks of shattered hopes 
of the men who built and leased the furnaces.' Turning to 
Georgia, Mr. Noble says : ' In Georgia the record is the same. If 
there is a single furnace in the State that for the past twelve 
years has not sunk the original owners all the money they put in 
and not changed hands, we do not know it.' And of Tennessee 
he writes as follows : ' Those of Tennessee have not fared much, 



A CHAPTER OF PROGRESS 1880-1886 303 



if any, better, even when backed by millions of English capital 
and skilled management from that country.' In conclusion Mr. 
Noble says : 6 It has been a weary struggle to make these enter- 
prises pay; it has been dragging an elephant at both legs all 
these years. The great trouble is, we have not home market be- 
yond the demand created by the iron furnaces themselves. The 
whole state of Alabama cannot take the product of a single blast 
furnace for a month. We depend entirely on the North and 
great West to keep our furnaces going/ . . . 

" The men who have gone into the iron business with any hope 
of making iron cheaper than England, and making nothing else, 
have lost their money. . . . The $55,000,000 of capital which 
has gone into Southern industry during the first four months of 
this year (1883) has been invested in cotton and woolen mills, 
flour mills, saw mills, furniture factories, agricultural implement 
works, oil mills, and a variety of other industries that will tend 
to create a home market for the products of the heavy mining 
and pig-iron industries. 

" It has cost a good deal, as Mr. Noble shows, but the experi- 
ence of the 6 cheap iron ' men teaches two valuable tariff lessons. 
It points out the value of a home market, and the folly of a com- 
munity's attempting to become rich, prosperous, and contented 
without diversified industries. The result in the South has been 
to create a more sound, protective sentiment, a sentiment strong 
enough to rise above sugar, rice, iron ore, and the coarser grades 
of cotton goods, and to be essentially protective. With this ob- 
ject in view, and with a firm determination on the part of the 
investor to sustain the American protective system, regardless of 
party ties, I can understand why capital continues to pour into 
the Southern States, and even into districts already containing 
painful monuments to lost fortunes and shattered hopes. That 
iron can be made cheaper in the South than in any Northern 
State is undoubtedly true. To imagine, however, that the six 
Southern iron-producing districts can make pig iron, and noth- 
ing else, paying the same price for a less effective labor, and from 
three dollars to five dollars per ton to carry their product to mar- 
ket, and grow rich out of this one industry, requires a greater 
amount of faith in Southern possibilities than I possess. 

" From information obtained in the six districts enumerated 
above, I should think that the cheapest iron could be made at 
Oxmoor, a few miles south of this place. I was positively told 
here that the ore only cost sixty cents a ton, the coke $2.30 a ton, 
and the limestone for a ton of iron twenty cents. Here is the 
cost of the stock : 



2\ tons iron ore $1.40 

Limestone 20 

Coke 3.45 



Total cost stock $5.05 



304 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



" Add to this twenty cents for boiler fuel, thirty cents for sand 
and water supplies, repairs, taxes, and interest on working capi- 
tal, $1.20, and labor and salaries, $2.25 to $3.95, accord- 
ing to an estimate made by Mr. J. W. Sloss, and we have the 
cost of iron, exclusive of interest on original plant, exactly nine 
dollars a ton at Oxmoor. 

" These are the outward visible signs. The cost of the principal 
stock used was obtained on the spot yesterday, and the $3.95 
taken from the Sloss estimate. But they do not make iron at 
Oxmoor at this figure. Why they do not I am unable to say. 
Here is the estimated cost of a ton of pig iron by Mr. Sloss, of 
Birmingham, based upon a run of twelve months at his two fur- 
naces in this city : 



2\ tons ore, at $1.60 $3.60 

1.4 tons coke, at $2.99 4.06 

\ ton limerock, at 90 cents 30 

Fuel for boiler 20 

Sand, water, supplies 30 

Repairs, taxes and interest on working capital 1.19 

Labor and salaries 2.25 



Total , $11.90 

" Estimate of labor on foregoing : 

Ore $2.25 

Coke 2.13 

Limestone 17 

Fuel 14 

Repairs and materials 77 

Labor and salaries 2.25 



$7.71 

Total freights on stock to ton of ore $1.50, two thirds of which, we 

think, would be labor 1.00 



$8.71 

" Mr. Sloss told me that in this estimate he has only charged 
interest on the working capital and not on the investment, and, 
as the working capital is only $100,000 and the investment 
$700,000, something should be added for this. The average cost 
for making a ton of pig iron at the Sloss furnace for the coming 
year, owing to accidents, Mr. Sloss says, will be nearer thirteen 
dollars a ton. 

" Turning from the Sloss furnace to the Alice furnace, in this 
city, I found that ore eighteen feet thick was being mined out- 
side for this furnace at thirty cents a ton ; on the inside they pay 
from fifty cents to one dollar. Put it all at one dollar, and we 



have : 

2\ tons ore $2.25 

Limestone 50 

Coke 2.50 

Labor, incidentals and interest, as per Sloss's estimate 3.95 



Total . $9.20 



A CHAPTER OF PROGRESS 1880-1886 305 



" But it costs a good deal here to handle cinders, and, with the 
interest on bonds, etc., the cost will reach at the least ten dollars 
and one half per ton. Mr. Hillman, who manages these works, 
would undoubtedly say this is a very low figure, and he would 
claim the cost nearer thirteen dollars a ton. But, at the low cost 
of the stock, I am at a loss to know why iron cannot be made at 
the price indicated, and made with a profit. 

"In the Tennessee iron-producing districts I found, for ex- 
ample, the Cowan furnace, at Cowan, using a soft red ore costing 
as high as $2.50 a ton. They have to haul ore from Rockwood 
and get it delivered under Lookout Mountain at $1.75 a ton, the 
freight from the making $2.50. The coke they get from their 
own ovens at Tracy City, and the furnace is charged five cents a 
bushel for it. The coal is mined, and coking done by convict 
labor, and the coke company makes a profit on the coke at five 
cents. I mention this because both the Cowan and the South 
Pittsburg furnace belong to the Tennessee Coal and Iron Com- 
pany.. Here is an estimate of the cost of a ton of iron at Cowan : 



Iron ore $5.65 

Limestone 50 

Coke, at 5 cents a bushel 3.75 

Labor . 1.50 

Incidentals 50 



Total $11.90 



" I believe, when we take into consideration the convict labor, 
iron ought to be made at Cowan for the above price. The pro- 
prietors claim that they can make it at twelve dollars and one- 
half. It will be noticed that labor on a ton of iron costs more in 
the Birmingham District, but material much less ; the difference 
between $1.40 and $5.65 for iron ore and $2.25 and $3.75 for coke 
is considerable. . . . 

u The great drawback, however, to Southern iron making is 
the cost of getting it to the great centers of industry, where it is 
worked up into a thousand shapes and forms. The hope of future 
importance for the new town of Sheffield is- based upon the fact 
that the Tennessee River will furnish cheap transportation for 
the manufactured article, whether pig or a more advanced 
product. The best market for the South is the West, though 
both of the Virginia districts can ship East. . . . 

" To sum up the results of this inquiry, it is safe to say that 
iron can be made with profit in the Birmingham District at from 
$10.50 to $13.50 a ton; that the great drawback to the success 
of this industry is the lack of dependent industries to consume 
the iron when made, combined, of course, with the disadvantages 
incidental to developing untried industries in a new country. 
The second of these difficulties time and experience will over- 
come ; the first and greatest obstacle will never be overcome until 
such States as Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama join hands with_ 

20 



306 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



the great manufacturing States of the North, and earnestly advo- 
cate the American system of political economy, with its diversi- 
fied industries and home market. ..." 

To return now for a time to the movements of Henry F. 
DeBardeleben during this period, it seems that the colonel, ill 
and worn out, left the Birmingham District expecting never to 
return. Having sold out his Pratt Coal and Coke Company to 
Enoch Ensley and associates, he signed over to his former part- 
ner, F. L. Wads worth, as trustee, all his various other mineral 
properties and interests, and went out to Mexico, where he took 
up sheep ranching near Loredo. He found that he did not have 
tuberculosis after all, and out in the free open-air life he gradu- 
ally recovered his old health and stamina. He began to take 
little trips up to San Antonio, Texas, for here was scent of what 
was going on, and some taste for enterprise. It was the meeting- 
point, indeed, in the early eighteen-eighties of all the men who 
were building up the great Southwest. 

One day, in October of 1881, Colonel DeBardeleben chanced 
to meet out there a Kentucky lawyer, William Thompson Under- 
wood. Mr. Underwood was at that time engaged in straighten- 
ing out defective land titles in Texas, owned by certain of his 
clients. Having a taste for speculation, he was interested more, 
perhaps, in real estate ventures and various industrial enter- 
prises than in law practice. DeBardeleben's description of the 
Birmingham District, and the fact that some of his own Ken- 
tucky and Tennessee acquaintances — Major Peters, the DuPonts, 
James O. Caldwell, T. T. Hillman, and Enoch Ensley — had so 
recently invested there, led to Mr. Underwood's decision to look 
over the field. In the following winter — February of 1882 — 
he joined DeBardeleben, who was back in Birmingham by this 
time, and the firm of DeBardeleben and Underwood was formed, 
and the company capitalized at $300,000. The first move, one 
more blast furnace for Birmingham, was straightway begun. 
Thirty acres lying between First Avenue and the railroad right- 
of-way and Thirtieth Street and Avondale was bought of the 
Elyton Land Company, and construction work started on the 
Mary Pratt furnace (named for DeBardeleben's second little 
daughter, who is to-day the wife of the Birmingham lawyer, 
Walker Percy, attorney for the Tennessee Company). 

The furnace went into blast in 1883, thus making, with Eureka 
Company, rolling mills, Alice, Edwards, Sloss, Linn, and Pratt 



A CHAPTER OF PROGRESS 1880-1886 307 



mines, the Cahaba Company and Woodward, the tenth well- 
launched venture of the coal and iron trade of the Birmingham 
District. DeBardeleben was out in the field a good deal, devel- 
oping the Henry-Ellen properties he had purchased from Al- 
drich, and prospecting in the Blue Creek Basin, and going back 
and forth from Texas and Mexico. The management of the 
Mary Pratt Company, its financing and operation, devolved 
mainly upon Mr. Underwood. He opened and worked brown ore 
mines at Greenpond, and red ore mines at McShan Mountain, 
near McCalla on the Alabama Great Southern. He ran the 
Mary Pratt with excellent results, gaining a good annual output 
for a furnace of that period. The ore used was a clean, low sul- 
phur brown hematite, and produced a high grade iron, largely in 
demand for foundry use; a grade that attracted a steady mar- 
ket in the East and North, and did much to counteract the preju- 
dice existing there against Alabama iron. Mr. Underwood, by 
personal visits in 1884 and 1885 to consumers in New York, 
Boston, Fall River, Providence, and other eastern points, suc- 
cessfully introduced the Mary Pratt iron, and created a profit- 
able northern and eastern market for the concern, thus opening 
the way to a more agreeable reception and interested inspection 
of the various brands of the Birmingham District. 

In the spring of 1884 DeBardeleben and Underwood leased 
from the Alice Furnace Company a tract of ore land on Red 
Mountain and opened and operated mines at the point known as 
Reading (now owned by the Tennessee Company), with George 
L. Morris as superintendent. They subsequently contracted with 
Mr. Morris and his brother, Thomas Morris, for mining this ore. 
The opening of these mines caused the beginning of the Birming- 
ham Mineral Railroad, the first four miles of which was built 
from the Louisville and Nashville main line at Graces Gap, in 
the spring of 1884, to haul ore for the Mary Pratt furnace. 

From that time until now William T. Underwood has con- 
tributed to the upbuilding of the coal and iron business of Ala- 
bama the best efforts of his life and all the resources he could 
command. "Though," he has invariably stated, "my part was 
not large as compared with that of others, yet it has been enough 
to entitle me to feel pride and great interest in the Alabama 
mineral district, at all times, and anxiety for its welfare." 

In addition to his management of the Mary Pratt Furnace 
Company, Mr. Underwood became a director in the First Na- 



308 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



tional Bank, and in the Birmingham Trust and Savings Com- 
pany, an early street railway company, and has been interested 
in other enterprises throughout the district. His development 
of the Blount and Etowah counties coal field during the late 
eighteen-nineties laid the foundation for some of the best of the 
Alabama Steel and Wire Company's holdings, and will be treated 
in the chapter relating to the Southern Steel Company. 

Although born in Tennessee, W. T. Underwood spent his early 
years in Kentucky. His parents were Kentuckians of old Vir- 
ginian ancestry. 

The first of the Underwood family in North America was an 
English colonist who came with the Lees and others from Shrop- 
shire, about the middle of the seventeenth century, and took up 
a large grant of land under the Crown on the James River in 
Goochland County. A great-grandson of this colonist was Joseph 
R. Underwood, who went out to Kentucky as a boy, and, as men- 
tioned in Chapter II, served in the "War of 1812. This boy 
later represented Kentucky in the Twenty-fourth, Twenty-fifth, 
Twenty-sixth, and Twenty-seventh Congress; also served as 
United States senator from Kentucky from 1847 to 1853, and 
later on as Judge of the Court of Appeals. His son, Eugene 
Underwood, became a prominent lawyer of Tennessee, and was 
one of the original promoters of the Louisville and Nashville 
Railroad and its first lawyer. Two of his sons later to become 
identified with the industrial and political life of the State of 
Alabama were William T. Underwood, born in Nashville, Ten- 
nessee, July 24, 1848, and Oscar W. Underwood, at the present 
time United States Representative of the ninth district of 
Alabama. William T. Underwood, educated at the public schools 
of Louisville and at the Forrest Academy, was put to the law 
early, and admitted to practice in the Kentucky courts. He pres- 
ently located in the Northwest, however, and ventured in the 
State of Minnesota with land deals and speculations. He came 
at last to see, as has been detailed, that the West was not to be 
compared to the new growing South as an investment field, so 
he eventually concentrated at Birmingham. 



CHAPTER XX 

THE NORTHEASTERN COUNTIES 1870-1890 

Iron-making ventures after the war. Summary of Calhoun County opera- 
tions. Iron men and United States Army officers in the lead. Beginning 
of Anniston. Resume" of Samuel Noble's career. View from Oxford 
Furnace ruins. "If ever I am able to build a town this is the spot I 
will choose." Handicaps ahead. Acquisition of Lloyd and Maddox 
properties. Raising capital. General Daniel Tyler visits region. Organ- 
ization of Woodstock Iron Company. Description of first two furnaces. 
Successful operation under Noble and Tyler regime. Incorporation 
of town of Anniston. Transfer of Noble manufacturing interests from 
Georgia to Alabama. Assistance rendered by General Tyler. Formation 
of Clifton Iron Company. Purchase of Alabama Furnace Company. 
Erection of first coke furnaces of Calhoun County. Diversified indus- 
tries inaugurated. Biography of John E. Ware. Liberal policy of 
Woodstock Company. Iron making in Cherokee County. Organiza- 
tion of Tecumseh Iron Company. Biographical sketches of General 
Williard Warner and N. W. Trimble. Work of General Burke. Stone- 
wall Iron Company formed. Career of John S. Moragne. Events in 
Etowah County. Colonel Robert Kyle plants diversified industries in 
this section. Entrance of J. M. Elliott, Sr. Reorganization of Round 
Mountain Iron Works. Achievements of J. M. Elliott, Jr. Upbuilding 
of Gadsden and Attalla. Tributes to Samuel Noble. Death of the 
great iron-master. Influence of his personality. Reconstruction work 
in Bibb County. Four United States senators assume control of old 
Bibb Furnace. Entrance of Thomas Jefferson Peters. Organization of 
Brierfield Coal and Iron Company. Sketch of Frank Fitch. Cahaba 
Coal Field a wilderness in early eighties. John R. McLean of Cincin- 
nati interested in mineral region. Discovery of coal seams of Har- 
grove, Piper, and Cane Creek Mines. Major Peters' plan of reconstruc- 
tion. A million dollars invested in improvements. Causes of failure 
of company. Formation of Alabama Iron and Steel Company. Death 
of Major Peters. Sketch of George Frederick Peter. Outlook in Shelby 
County. Resume" of Horace Ware's achievements. Pioneer work in 
Texas. 




HE making of the Birmingham District opened the 
way into new regions of achievement throughout 
the mineral belt. In the northeastern section, as well 



as in the other quarters, whose records have just been presented, 
fresh iron making enterprises gradually revived the country com- 
pletely ravaged by the dogs of war. Although none of the antebel- 
lum furnaces of any marked State influence in the counties of 
Calhoun, Cherokee, Etowah, and Talladega were reconstructed, 
yet each, in turn, was a road-breaking work. Out of the ruins of 



310 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



the Oxford plant, in Calhoun County, for instance, sprang a new 
growth, the city of Anniston. 

An account of the pioneer iron making in this section was 
detailed in an earlier chapter. " Calhoun County can pro- 
duce the written record of making pig iron back to August 12, 
1843, and continuously to this date, 1909," says G. B. Randolph. 
" Seven furnaces have been built within the county borders. It 
is shown conclusively that this county furnished the iron that 
went into the building of our State capitol; that she sent iron 
to Mobile during our war with Mexico to make munitions of war 
to whip the Mexicans; that she furnished iron to make all 
kinds of utensils and tools for the household ; implements for the 
farm and mines; salt kettle castings for mills as far east as 
the State of South Carolina; iron for the armor plating of the 
first ironclad gunboat ever built in the South, and also for the 
last boat to lower her colors to Admiral Farragut in Mobile Bay." 

As the history of the Birmingham District, early and late, re- 
volves around the activities of a few coal and iron men, so later, 
the history of the Anniston district, and that of the close neighbor- 
ing towns of Gadsden, Attalla, Ironaton, and Talladega circles 
about a small group of far-sighted, practical iron men and United 
States Army officers. Chief among them are Samuel Noble, 
General Daniel Tyler, General Williard Warner, A. L. Tyler, E. 
L. Tyler, Robert Kyle, John S. Moragne, J. M. Elliott, General 
J. W. Burke, Eugene Zimmerman, and James, John, Stephen, 
George, and William Noble. 

The history of Anniston dates from the day of the formation 
of the Woodstock Iron Company by the Nobles and Tylers in 
1872, shortly after the founding of Birmingham. The man at 
the front of affairs, the eager, leading spirit of this particular 
quarter of Alabama was the iron-master, Samuel Noble. It will 
be recalled that Mr. Noble first came into Alabama during the 
Civil War, when, together with his father, James Noble, and 
his brothers, John and William, he prospected through the 
northeastern counties and built the Cornwall furnace as practi- 
cally an auxiliary to the Noble iron works at Rome, Georgia. 

Samuel Noble, the fifth member of a family of twelve children, 
was born in Cornwall, England, November 22, 1834, the same 
birth year of that other master workman of the South, Milton 
H. Smith, president of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad. 
Mr. Noble's career from childhood, in England and in the United 



THE NORTHEASTERN COUNTIES 1870-1890 311 



States, like that of each of his six brothers, was one of steady 
application under his father's training to the iron trade ; " he 
toiled in the foundry, the rolling mill, and the machine shop." 
When the family removed from Pennsylvania to Georgia, young 
Sam Noble soon took the lead. It is known of him that as a 
boy he was " quick, masterful, brave, and intelligent, and these 
traits of character added to his prodigious energy and mastery 
of details soon put him in control of the business." Major Charles 
H. Smith of the Atlanta Constitution recalls how, during the 
war, Sam Noble would superintend the Cornwall Iron Works in 
Cherokee County, Alabama, by day, and then ride, by night, 
across country, to Rome, Georgia, attend to important business, 
and be back at his post by next sunrise, the round trip, forty-eight 
miles. " This was not rarely done, but frequently," says Major 
Smith. " His strong frame and iron will seemed incapable of 
being tired. He put as much labor on his mental and physical 
forces in one hour as most men do in a year. The night watchers 
of Rome knew his habits well, and would say, ' Sam Noble came 
in again at ten last night on the black pony, and left this morning 
before day. Don't he beat all for work ? But it will tell on him 
after a while. See if it don't.' " 

According to Miss McMillian of Anniston, the first time Samuel 
Noble saw the present site of Anniston was on one of these trips, 
when, in company with Bishop Quintard, he was keeping well 
in front of a Yankee raiding party from Columbus, Georgia, on 
his way to Rome. They passed the ruins of the old Oxford Iron 
Company's furnace that had been burned a short time before by 
the Federal troops. Mr. Noble afterwards revisited the spot, in 
company with Henry W. Grady and Major Charles H. Smith, 
and, pointing out to them, from the old furnace hill, the beauties 
of the view, he said : " If ever I am able to build a town this is 
the spot I will choose." In the last year of the war, Sam Noble 
was captured with his train, when getting provisions up in Ten- 
nessee. He was imprisoned in Nashville, but through his uncle, 
a Pennsylvania iron man, he was paroled. He obtained an order 
from President Lincoln, saving cotton from destruction, but it 
was rendered fruitless by the president's death. Upon the iron- 
master's return to Georgia, he faced that which every Georgian 
and every Southern man was facing. Every vestige of his handi- 
work had been blasted off the earth by the Federal guns. And 
there was not one dollar's capital available for reconstruction 



312 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



purposes. Sam Noble did not stop to mark time. He gathered 
together specimens of Alabama iron ores, and returned North, on 
the hunt for capital. 

" In 1869/' writes Miss McMillian, " Mr. Noble came back to 
the site of the Oxford furnace, and in company with Uncle 
Johnnie Lloyd, as he loved to call him, tramped for four days 
over the surrounding hills and valleys, looking into the quantity 
and quality of the ores." After each day's tramp Mr. Noble 
would discuss his plans for a town with Mr. Lloyd. The huge 
bowlder of iron ore on which they used to sit, in Mr. Lloyd's 
yard, is pointed out to this day as " Sam Noble's resting-place." 

In 1871, with the financial assistance of the Quintards of 
New York, Mr. Noble purchased the Oxford properties and large, 
adjacent territory comprising undeveloped, brown hematite ores, 
and an extensive acreage of yellow pine timber, the whole prop- 
erty eventually aggregating one hundred thousand acres, cut by 
the Selma, Rome, and Dalton Railroad (now the Southern). 
There was no capital on hand for development purposes, how- 
ever. Mr. Noble worked ceaselessly. When up in Charleston, in 
1872, he visited Mr. A. L. Tyler, then acting vice-president of 
the South Carolina Railroad, with the hope of enlisting his 
interest. As it happened, Mr. Tyler's father, General Daniel 
Tyler, then president of the Mobile and Montgomery Railroad, 
was in the office the morning of the iron-master's visit. He 
became immediately interested in a discussion of the mineral 
properties of Alabama. 

" I have had the iron business burned into me," the general 
said to Mr. Noble, " and have not forgotten my first experience, 
but if I can find a property that has on it everything for making 
iron, without buying any raw material, or bringing any to it, I 
might be tempted to go into the business again." 1 

' At that time Daniel Tyler was over seventy years of age. 
His folk, like Aldrich's, were an old New England clan, his 
mother, a granddaughter of Jonathan Edwards, and his father, 
a soldier of the Revolution. Daniel Tyler was born January 7, 
1799, in Windham County, Connecticut. Graduating from the 
West Point Military Academy in 1819, he entered the artillery 
branch of the service, in which he accomplished work of value 
to the United States army, in that he translated from the 
French various significant military publications. He was de- 
1 A letter from Samuel Noble in records of Calhoun County. 



THE NORTHEASTERN COUNTIES 1870-1890 313 



tailed abroad to collect data, and in 1829 was admitted in the 
school of practice at Metz, where he translated the latest French 
army system of artillery. In 1834 the young army officer re- 
signed from the service and entered the ranks of the iron-masters, 
serving for a time as president of a little coal and iron company 
of Pennsylvania. After various unsuccessful attempts to make 
iron with anthracite coal (before the advent of David Thomas), 
Mr. Tyler went into the railroad business in which he achieved 
much prominence. At the outbreak of the Civil War Daniel Tyler 
returned to the service, being mustered in April 23, 1861, as colo- 
nel of the First Connecticut Volunteers, in which regiment he was 
eventually appointed brigadier-general. He later had command of 
the first division under McDowell at Bull Run, and served in 
Union forces until his resignation in April, 1864, when he again 
became identified with railroading. The chance interview with 
Samuel Noble seemed to reawaken his early enthusiasm in the 
iron business. 

" I had but little idea," Mr. Noble observed, " that a man of 
his age would, on a second thought, take such a long and un- 
comfortable journey, and was surprised at his coming to Rome 
some ten days after our meeting for a visit of inspection. At 
that time there was no railroad station, and only three old un- 
finished houses at what is now the town of Anniston. So we 
stopped at Oxford, two miles below, where we found horses. He 
rode with me over the country, exploring every hill and valley, 
gathering information from everybody he met about the timber 
lands, limestone and rock quarries, their location and extent, and 
then going to the places indicated, and examining them himself. 
. . . Nothing escaped his observation. ... I was surprised 
at his knowledge and practical ideas concerning the requisites 
of iron manufacture. We rode for three days in succession." 
TJie general talked very little about the property or his plans. 
" I will go back and bring up Alfred to look at it," he said. 
That was all. The upshot, however, was the organization of the 
Woodstock Iron Company, with A. L. Tyler as president, and 
Samuel Noble as secretary, treasurer, and general manager. 
The company bought additional ore and timber lands designated 
by Mr. Noble, and in 1872 erected their charcoal blast furnace 
No. 1, which was a forty-ton capacity plant, and turned out 
daily that quantity of car wheel iron, soon becoming famous 
in the iron markets of the North and finding rapid sale at from 



314 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



forty to sixty dollars per ton. Concerning furnace No. 1 George 
B. Randolph notes : " This furnace had a fifty-two feet stack, 
and the bosh was ten feet in diameter. No. 2 was blown in on 
August 23, 1879. Both were charcoal furnaces, and nearly the 
same size. Their location was between what is now Noble Street 
and the Selma and Rome division of the Southern railroad, on 
the south side of Eighth Street. They continued in operation 
until the depression of 1893, when, after the change of owners, 
they went out of business; later they were razed, and now two 
cotton mills occupy the grounds." The two stacks afforded the 
company upwards of one hundred tons of the highest grade of 
chilling car wheel iron, which sold at fifty dollars per gross ton. 
The engines and all the machinery and iron castings entering into 
the construction of these two furnaces were made by Noble 
brothers, who served as their own draughtsmen, planning and exe- 
cuting every intricate detail. John W. Noble was the constructing 
engineer in charge. An enormous revenue to the stockholders 
was produced at the outset by this plant. 

The little town which was beginning to grow up about the 
Woodstock furnaces was also known as Woodstock. Major 
Smith wrote in The Atlanta Constitution as follows: 

" I remember when the great iron collapse of '73 came over 
our infant industries and crushed them. Etna and Stonewall 
and Round Mountain and Bartow and Ridge Valley and many 
others surrendered, and some were sold out by the sheriff, and 
some have never resumed, but the fires of Woodstock, as Annis- 
ton was then called, never went out. By day and by night the 
molten mass continued to roll from her furnaces, and every train 
carried her charcoal iron to northern markets. Iron had fallen 
from forty dollars a ton to eighteen, and the wonder was how 
Anniston could survive the shock. Sam Noble saw the impend- 
ing crash and immediately shipped by express several parcels of 
the Woodstock iron to different northern points. He followed 
them in person. Arriving at Springfield, Massachusetts, he went 
into the government armory with a piece of charcoal pig under 
his arm. He laid it down by the trip hammer and said : ' My 
friend, I am one of the craft. I used to work right where you 
work at the trip hammer. I am making iron now and would like 
for you to try this sample/ The man did so willingly. When 
it was at a white heat he put it under a steam hammer and 
crushed it into form, and doubled it, and welded and hammered 
again and again. He bent it and twisted it with his tongs, and 
after careful and patient inspection said : 6 This is the best iron 
I have ever handled ; where was it made ? ' Mr. Noble told him, 



THE NORTHEASTERN COUNTIES 1870-1890 315 



saying, e My friend, I wish to make a customer of this armory ; 
will you help me ? ' The man called up the superintendent and 
asked him to inspect the iron, and the result was a new customer 
at a good living price; and so he followed up the other parcels 
and made more customers, and thus by keeping clear of the iron 
brokers, who had iron of their own to sell and would sell it be- 
fore they would try to sell the consignments of others, Mr. Noble 
saved their commission and got a better price. This plan showed 
his sagacity in the time of peril and it kept the Anniston fires 
hot." 

This same year witnessed the incorporation of the little town 
that had grown up around the Woodstock Iron Company. The 
name Woodstock was changed to Anniston in honor of Annie, 
wife of Alfred L. Tyler, and on July 12, 1873, the place was 
incorporated as the town of Anniston by order of the county 
judge of probate. It did not receive its charter from the State 
legislature until 1879. Four years later, in 1883, it was formally 
opened to the public by Henry W. Grady, editor of the Atlanta 
Constitution, and in 1887 its charter was amended and amplified 
by the legislature and it received its baptism as a city. In 
1882 the Noble brothers brought their entire Rome manufactur- 
ing interests to the Woodstock locality, and put up a foundry for 
making car wheels, axles, furnace castings, and added shops for 
building railroad freight cars, ore, and coal trams, etc. These 
two furnaces and foundries and a cotton mill, which were built 
and placed in remunerative operation through the labor and 
co-operation of the Tylers and Nobles, formed the nucleus of the 
town of Anniston. 

Late in 1882 General Tyler died in New York City and was 
buried in the Hillside Cemetery in Anniston. Up to the last 
he was always planning and suggesting something for the benefit 
of Anniston and its people. Samuel Noble says : " In acting 
on his suggestions and plans we found how wise he was in fore- 
thought. ... To his earnest exertions and liberality we are in- 
debted for the water works, the cotton factory, and the car works, 
the promotion of immigration, the successful cultivation of 
grasses, the introduction of blooded cattle and improved stock, 
large and more comfortable houses for the workingmen, and the 
building of churches and schools for them?" 1 

1 General Tyler's granddaughter, Edith Carew, became the wife of 
Theodore Roosevelt. 



316 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



In 1880 the Clifton Iron Company was organized by Samuel 
Noble and his associates. He then negotiated the purchase of 
the Alabama Furnace Company property located on Salt Creek, 
nine miles from the Clifton property at Ironaton, and consolidated 
these two interests, naming the Alabama furnace community 
Jenifer, in honor of his mother. In 1884-85 he built at Ironaton 
two forty-ton charcoal furnaces and enlarged the one at Jenifer, 
thus having under his control and management five well- 
equipped, up-to-date charcoal furnaces, making car wheel pig 
iron of highest chilling quality and strength. In 1886-87 he 
completed the construction, in connection with the Woodstock 
Iron Company, of two large coke furnaces in Anniston with a 
capacity of two hundred tons each. The engines, machinery, and 
all iron work for these mammoth iron producers were made by 
Noble brothers in their Anniston shops. 

Quickly following this enterprise Mr. Noble conceived the idea 
of building in Anniston pipe works for the manufacture of 
cast iron water pipe, and special casting for water lines. Carry- 
ing out this conception and plan to consume his coke furnace 
product, he organized the Anniston Pipe Works Company with 
$500,000 capital stock. These works were completed in 1888- 
89. The first order this plant received for its output was for 
eight miles of twenty-inch pipe mains to supply the city of 
Anniston. 

Associated with Samuel Noble in various of his enterprises 
was John E. Ware, who was a son of the pioneer iron-master, 
Horace Ware, and has served in the iron business for twenty 
years, acting as secretary and treasurer of Clifton Iron Company, 
of the Anniston Pipe Works, and as general manager of Jenifer 
Furnace Company. John E. Ware was born at the Shelby Iron 
Works in Shelby County, December 4, 1849. He was educated at 
Howard College, Marion, and later entered the Virginia Military 
Institute, graduating in the class of 1871. For five years he 
was editor and publisher of Our Mountain Home in Talla- 
dega, and in 1881 went into the iron business. He retired in 
1901 and the following year became a resident of Birmingham. 

Iron making in Cherokee County was resumed in the early 
eighteen-seventies, immediately after the organization of the 
Woodstock Iron Company. Before the year 1880 the following 
companies were in active operation there : Tecumseh Iron Com- 



THE NORTHEASTERN COUNTIES 1870-1890 317 



pany, Stonewall Iron Company, Rock Run Furnace Company, 
Cornwall Iron Works, and the Aetna Furnace Company. 

The Tecumseh Iron Company was organized in 1873 by General 
Williard Warner. Associated with him as stockholders and di- 
rectors were General Joseph W. Burke of Illinois, N. W. Trimble 
of Alabama, Colonel A. E. Buck of Maine, Judge W. B. Woods 
of Ohio, Charles W. Buckley of Alabama, E. G. Barney of 

Mississippi, Merriman of Massachusetts, Captain Joseph W. 

Dimmick of Illinois, E. G. Stetson of Massachusetts, W. F. Ma- 
son of New York (who was secretary and treasurer), and gen- 
eral R. W. Healey of Illinois. General Warner acted as president 
and manager of the company until 1890, when the plant was shut 
down. Stephen Stucky of Oxford, Alabama, one of the expert 
pioneer furnace builders and operators in the State, was em- 
ployed to build the furnace which was named Tecumseh in honor 
of General Sherman, and planned by General Warner. It was 
12x60, and thus one of the largest charcoal furnaces in the 
country at that time (1874), and considered the finest plant, 
" architecturally," in the South. The furnace failed at first to 
meet the expectations of the constructors, as the output was only 
fifteen tons per day. In the eighties, however, when the plant 
was reconstructed after Mr. Stucky's designs, the output in- 
creased to forty tons per day and the furnace proved success- 
ful and profitable. The ore was brown hematite in the immediate 
vicinity of the furnace, and the charcoal was made in beehive 
ovens. 

The projector of this company, Williard Warner, was a native 
of Ohio. Born in Granville, September 4, 1826, he was raised 
on a farm. He was graduated at Marietta College, 1845, and four 
years later struck out for California, and was like John T. Milner, 
one of the " f orty-niners." He dug gold for a couple of years, 
then returned to Ohio and built and managed a machine plant 
at Newark. He served in the Union army as major and lieuten- 
ant-colonel of the Seventy-sixth Ohio Volunteer Infantry; as 
inspector-general on the staff of General William Tecumseh Sher- 
man; as colonel of the One Hundred and Eightieth Ohio Vol- 
unteer Infantry, and was, at length, brevetted brigadier-general 
and major-general. After serving a term in the Ohio State sen- 
ate, General Warner located in Alabama in 1867 and engaged in 
planting and raising cotton. He was elected a member of the 
Alabama Legislature in 1868, and in that same year to the United 



318 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



States Senate. During 1871 he served as collector of the port of 
Mobile and was appointed by President Grant as governor of 
New Mexico. He declined the appointment, however, and went 
into the iron business of Alabama. When the Tecumseh works 
shut down General Warner removed to Tennessee, where some 
years before he had built other blast furnaces. He settled in 
Chattanooga, where he became identified with various interests. 
In 1900 he was elected to the Tennessee Legislature, and in 1905 
served one term as commander of the Loyal Legion of the United 
States. 

Of his associates in the Tecumseh Iron Company, General 
Burke was one of the most active, and, according to R. H. Ed- 
monds, " accomplished a work for the South that was broad and 
lasting. . . . When General Burke was campaigning in Cal- 
houn County," says Mr. Edmonds, "he was so charmed by the 
beauty of the scenery that he vowed to himself that whenever the 
war ended he would there build for himself a home." He did 
build that home, and, up to the time of his death, he was unceas- 
ing in his work for the material development of the State. He 
was among those who early foresaw the need of river and harbor 
improvement and gave special attention to urging the impor- 
tance of this work upon the country. 

Mr. N. W. Trimble, although born in Mississippi, at Holly 
Springs, the site of W. S. McElwain's first iron works, was 
reared in Nashville, Tennessee, where his father, Thomas Clarke 
Trimble, practiced law. During the war, N. W. Trimble served 
in the Confederate army. On his return home he again took up 
the study of law. He was admitted to the bar in 1866 and located 
in Montgomery, Alabama. He was appointed clerk of the United 
States court in Mobile, and in 1899, clerk of the United States 
court of the Northern division of Alabama, and afterwards as 
referee in bankruptcy. He was appointed receiver of the Mary 
Lee mines, and was actively interested in the Tecumseh Iron 
Company from the day of its organization until the plant 
shut down. Of the other directors and builders of Tecumseh, 
Colonel Buck became United States minister to Japan during 
President McKinley's term, and died in the Orient. Colonel 
Woods, a brother-in-law of General Warner's, afterwards be- 
came asociate justice of the United States Supreme Court. Judge 
Buckley represented Alabama in the United States Congress, 
later acting as probate judge of Montgomery County, Alabama, 



THE NORTHEASTERN COUNTIES 1870-1890 319 



and, at the time of his death, in 1906, was postmaster at 
Montgomery. 

The Stonewall Iron Company's plant, like the Tecumseh 
furnace, was also situated on the Selma, Rome^ and Dalton Rail- 
road, and about three miles from the Georgia line. Its yield 
per day was eighteen tons charcoal pig iron. The officers of 
this company were J. M. Selkirk, president; J. W. Bones, sec- 
retary and treasurer, and William Wurts, superintendent. 

The Rock Run furnace, owned by J. H. Bass of Fort Wayne, 
Indiana, was rebuilt in 1879-80 and operated always as a private 
enterprise, and as practically an auxiliary of the Bass Car 
Wheel plant in Indiana. 

Among the pioneer mining men of the Cherokee County was 
John S. Moragne, who, in conjunction with John W. Duncan, 
mined and shipped iron ore out of the county in 1873. Mr. 
Moragne, born in 1814, in the Abbeville district of South 
Carolina, represented Cherokee County in the Alabama Legis- 
lature in 1851-52. He named Etowah County and the towns 
of Gadsden (of which he was one of the founders), and Attalla. 
Up to his death in 1881 he was an active worker for the mineral 
development of both Cherokee and Etowah counties. Iron mak- 
ing records of both of these counties are closely interwoven. 
Post bellum operations in Etowah County were the Round Moun- 
tain Charcoal Blast Furnace Company, the Gadsden Furnace 
Company, and the Gadsden Iron Company. Among the men 
most active in the mineral development of this particular sec- 
tion are recorded the names of Robert B. Kyle, James M. Elliott, 
Sr., and James M. Elliott, Jr. 

Colonel Kyle, by birth a North Carolinian, was one of the early 
railroad contractors of Alabama. He settled in Gadsden late 
in the fifties, and became practically the leader of the town. 
Like Colonel Sloss he made his mercantile interests the basis 
for far reaching lines of industry. He served in the Confed- 
erate Army during the war, and directly after the close of hostili- 
ties began construction work under contract on the Alabama 
and Chattanooga Railroad, and also resumed his mercantile 
business. In conjunction with W. P. Hollingsworth, Colonel 
Kyle built the Gadsden branch to Attalla and started the lumber 
business of that district, forming the Kyle Lumber Company. 
He then established the Gadsden Land and Improvement Com- 
pany, and organized, in the eighties, the Gadsden Furnace 



320 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



Company. This plant, which was one of the largest coke fur- 
naces in the South in 1887, having a capacity of one hundred 
and twenty tons, was located on the Coosa River, close to the 
Rome and Decatur Railroad. 

James M. Elliott, Sr., born at Sandy Ridge, North Carolina, 
November 22, 1822, was one of the early settlers of Rome, 
Georgia, and one of the pioneers in the steamboat business of 
Alabama. In 1857 he acquired the Round Mountain iron works 
whose early records have been presented in another chapter, 
and in 1871 reorganized the plant as the Round Mountain Coal 
and Iron Company and increased its capacity from seven to 
twenty-five tons per day. He also established the Elliott Pig Iron 
Company. 

His son, J. M. Elliott, Jr., was born November 12, 1854, at 
Rome, Georgia, and was graduated from Emory and Henry Col- 
lege, Virginia, in 1874. He moved to Alabama in 1877 and lo- 
cated at Gadsden. Like his father he started into the steamboat 
business as clerk and eventually became general manager and 
president. He also took up the lumber business in Alabama, 
Kansas, and Texas, and in 1887 he organized the Elliott Car 
Works Company of which he served continuously as president 
and general manager for seventeen years. Captain Elliott was 
also connected with the Kyle Lumber Company, and succeeded 
his father as president of the Round Mountain Works, and as 
president of the Elliott Pig Iron Company. This Round Moun- 
tain plant furnishes all the high grade car wheel chilling iron 
used in this car works. Stephen Stuckey, who was engaged in 
the reconstruction of almost every plant of this region, also re- 
modeled the Round Mountain works. The building up of Attalla, 
another furnace town of Etowah County, was coincident with 
the growth of Gadsden. The town was located five miles west 
of Gadsden on the line of the Queen and Crescent route, and 
has during recent years become a railroad center and an important 
point in the mineral region. At the present time, Gadsden is 
the center of operations of the Southern Iron and Steel Company. 

In Talladega County the Talladega furnace, which had been 
built by English capitalists, passed into new hands. Eugene 
Zimmerman of Cincinnati (father of the Duchess of Manchester) 
purchased the plant from creditors and attempted to put it on 
a profitable basis. In De Kalb County, along the line of the 
A. G. S., a marked degree of prosperity was shown late in 



THE NORTHEASTERN COUNTIES 1870-1890 321 



the eighteen-eighties. "Boom towns" sprang up all over the 
county, chief among them being Fort Payne, the county seat. 
Here two blast furnaces and a steel plant were eventually con- 
structed, but never operated. Practically the entire town was 
later owned by Edward Northcroft Cullom of Birmingham, and 
the plants were dismantled and sold for scrap iron. 

During the years of this activity in the mineral development 
of these northeastern counties, the town of Anniston, under the 
regime of the Nobles and Tylers, continued to progress. Every 
dollar made by the Woodstock Company was put into the making 
of this town. Streets were macadamized and shade trees planted. 
Churches and institutions were founded, among them being the 
church of Saint Michaels and All Angels, the Noble Institute for 
girls, a boys' high school, and homes, factories, storehouses, mills, 
a depot, and an inn. The foundations of the city were laid out 
on an extensive and durable plan. " I am planting for poster- 
ity," said Samuel Noble. According to the New York Times, 
" In building the city of Anniston, Mr. Noble evinced a genius 
that was superb in its all-embracing completeness. From a 
rugged, unsightly landscape there sprang, as if by magic, beauty, 
order, and prosperity, — a well planned, well governed little city. 
. . . In twelve years Samuel Noble created from the matrix of 
worthless clay and unsightly gullies an estate that was assessed 
on the State's tax books as worth seven and one half million 
dollars." From 1872 until 1883 practically the entire town of 
Anniston was owned mainly by members of the two families, 
Noble and Tyler. Anniston, from the beginning, was made by 
Samuel Noble a prohibition town. Major Smith writes: 

u Mr. Noble once said to me : '1 'm troubled about these humble 
people spending their money for beer and whiskey. Their families 
need that money and they shall have it. They spent twenty-four 
thousand dollars last year at our saloon, and my share of that 
money burns in my pocket; I am going to break it up. Their 
families shall have it.' Not long after this he closed the saloon, 
— the only one in Anniston, — and he made the workmen a 
speech — so convincing and effective that they sustained him, 
and the wages that had been spent for beer were placed in the 
bank and drew interest, and a new life was given to the laboring 
people. "We met one of them — a German — as we were walking 
around, and Sam Noble took him by the hand with a cordial 
greeting and said : ' You are almost well again, Jamie ; you look 
a good deal better than you did a week ago. How are your wife 

21 



322 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



and children ? ' ' All well, bless God ; and you, too, Mr. Noble ! 
We are all right, and I '11 be at the furnaces again on Monday. 
I have six hundred dollars in the bank now, and don't mind a 
little sickness now and then ; but you know when we used to run 
the beer I never had a dollar in the bank. Bless God, and you, 
too, Mr. Noble, for stopping it ! ' 99 

John E. Ware writes : 

" In all of Samuel Noble's varied activities, in planning, con- 
ceiving, in execution, and in operation, he was continuously and 
closely allied in sympathy and in interest with his brothers, 
John W. Noble, William Noble, James Noble, George Noble, 
and Stephen N. Noble, all of whom were iron men of note, and 
the success of each and the success of their combined efforts at- 
test their ability, their energy, and their determination. The 
stressful labors and lofty purposes of this family, born and reared 
to incessant activity, as a whole, or as individuals, were not given 
over wholly to material interests and the accumulation of wealth 
for wealth's sake, but the moral, religious, educational, and so- 
cial side of the diversified concerns of human life strongly ap- 
pealed to them and received liberal attention at every step and 
turn of their advancement." 

John W. Noble, founder and sole builder of the church of 
Saint Michaels and All Angels served as the constructing engineer 
in various of the works undertaken by the brothers. He was 
also one of the reorganizes of Jenifer Furnace Company in 
Talladega County. 

Before coming to Georgia James Noble had worked in Pennsyl- 
vania as foreman of the Philadelphia and Reading shops. He 
welded the first locomotive tires ever cut and welded in the 
United States. It was he who, later on in Rome, Georgia, in 
1857, constructed at the Noble shops the first locomotive built 
south of Richmond, Virginia, " the Alfred Shorter," which, with 
the " Willis J. Milner," have been mentioned in the war period. 
James Noble, Jr., served as mayor of Rome in 1864—65. He 
also became associated in various enterprises in Macon and At- 
lanta before removing to Anniston in 1880, when he became a 
partner in the Anniston Foundry and Machine Company, and 
served also as mayor. He died February 10, 1908. 

Stephen N. Noble, who met a tragic death in 1908, was the 
youngest member of this family of iron-masters. He constructed 
the "Little Clifton Railroad" from Jenifer to Ironaton. As 
superintendent of Jenifer furnace he doubled its output in his 



THE NORTHEASTERN COUNTIES 1870-1890 323 



first year of management, and gave the plant the lowest 
freight rate it had ever had. He founded the little town of 
Ironaton and was the builder of the first furnace at that point. 

Altogether the most significant results were accomplished 
throughout all the northeastern counties by the members of this 
Cornish family of iron workers. Samuel Noble, alert and ener- 
getic, " kept as ever to the forefront." During the years 1882 to 
1888 he accomplished an immense amount of work. After organ- 
izing the Clifton Iron Company, now a part of the Alabama 
Consolidated Company, Samuel Noble built a line of railway 
from Anniston to Gadsden and Attalla, making valuable com- 
peting freight connections at those points, and another railroad 
to Sylacauga via his Talladega furnaces and mines, making 
connections with the celebrated Blocton coal territory for furnace 
and factory fuel. His associate, John E. Ware says of him: 

" He conceived industry after industry and executed with mili- 
tary promptness and precision, each succeeding movement and 
stroke having direct reference and bearing to the former and 
every detail worked out and into a beautiful and practical con- 
summation. He was an iron-master in the broadest sense, a 
business man of wide scope and minute account ; and nothing in 
the manufacturing and industrial line was too intricate for his 
delving or too great for his undertaking and bringing to remu- 
nerative finish. There was system in his every movement, a well- 
thoughout purpose in his every forecast, a thorough under- 
standing of what he proposed to accomplish, and all that was 
practicable and for the betterment of his people and his State. 
The zeal of his indomitable spirit, his matchless energy, the in- 
tensity of his very nature, his knowing when to do and how to 
do all combined, and working to a common point, present the 
key to the success of his wonderful achievement in the world of 
labor. He knew men and how to manage them, and they in turn 
highly regarded him; and having the utmost confidence in his 
integrity and ability, they always rendered to him the best of 
their skill and energy in carrying forward to success all of his 
industrial projects. To-day the formative and preservative in- 
fluences of his work are evidenced and realized in many ways, 
whenever and wherever you take in Alabama's material growth 
and prospect. 

" In almost every street in Anniston to-day are evidences of 
his handiwork. It is no disparagement to any of his associates 
to accord to him the high place of leader. His plans were so far 
reaching and his execution so brilliant and successful, his energy 
so untiring, his skill so resourceful, his financiering ability so 
masterful, and his judgment and discernment so unerring that 



324 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



he easily ranks among the foremost of America's industrial cap- 
tains. ... He died in 1888, at the age of fifty-four years." 1 

There is no instance in the history of the South when a man 
in private life received at his death such tribute as did Samuel 
Noble. Delegations from the cities of Georgia and from nearly 
all the towns of the mineral region of Alabama attended the 
iron-master's funeral. The members of the Gladstone Lodge 
of the Sons of Saint George adjourned meeting and appointed 
a committee to draw up resolutions of respect towards "one of 
the greatest of their countrymen in the United States." Special 
trains were run from Rome, Georgia, and hundreds of Georgians, 
who claimed Samuel Noble as chief iron-master of the State of 
Georgia, assembled. It was estimated that over five thousand 
people gathered in Anniston on the funeral day. 

Various efforts were made during these years that witnessed 
the growth of Birmingham, Anniston, Gadsden, Florence, Deca- 
tur, and Sheffield to restore the iron business of Bibb and Shelby 
counties to its former state of emprise. An account of the re- 
construction of Bibb furnace and of its management for a brief 
space under General Gorgas has already been given. When in 
1873 both furnace and mill suspended operations they passed 
again to the control of a former management, — Colonel Huckabee, 
Alexander Knowles Shep^ard, Robert McCalley, W. D. Carter, 
Kearsley Carter, and William Douglass of Louisville, Kentucky. 
The plants were tied up in the courts more or less. Senator 
John T. Morgan had some stock in the property and it was 

1 After Samuel Noble's death the Woodstock plant was operated by 
Walter Crafts of Ohio. In 1897 it passed into the hands of J. M. Barr 
of Norfolk, Virginia and J. B. Carrington of Richmond, Virginia. The 
Woodstock Iron and Steel Corporation was organized with Mr. Barr as 
president and Mr. Carrington as vice-president. Mr. Carrington came 
into Alabama in 1885, and was connected first with the Virginia and Ala- 
bama Mining Company as a mining engineer, and later with the Sheffield 
and Birmingham Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company, after which he went 
into the coai business. Although born in Richmond, Virginia, December 24, 
1859, J. B Carrington located in the West, where he was engaged in rail- 
road and mining engineering. He was connected with the Richmond and 
Allegheny Railroad in 1884. In 1890 he married Miss Leila Gamble, a 
daughter of Judge Gamble of Walker County. 

Upon acquiring the Woodstock property, which had lain idle for some 
time, Mr. Barr and Mr. Carrington inaugurated a big reconstruction work. 
The expert furnaceman, John Dowling, was employed and the furnaces 
have been entirely remodeled. An item of importance relating to the 
old company is that the first spiegeleisen made in the United States was, 
according to Dr. Eugene A. Smith, made there. 



THE NORTHEASTERN COUNTIES 1870-1890 325 



through him that United States Senator Plumb of Kansas, 
United States Senator Morrell of Vermont, and United States 
Senator Fair of California eventually took hold of the financier- 
ing end of this company. A big railroad contractor and mining 
man of Kansas, Thomas Jefferson Peter, also became interested, 
and after a tour of inspection, undertaken at the request of 
Senators Plumb and Morgan, Major Peter, together with his 
distinguished associates, contracted for the purchase of the Brier- 
field rolling mill, foundry, and machine shop and all its lands, 
and also for the purchase of the Bibb furnace and its properties. 
This latter concern then (1881) owned by the Messrs. Carter 
was under the management of Frank Fitch. 

Although a native of New York Mr. Fitch had been engaged 
in the iron business of Kentucky for twenty years. He had been 
the owner and operator of the Red River iron works, had built 
blast furnaces, and opened coal and ore mines. He projected and 
practically built the old Sterling and Menifee Railroad. In 
1880 he entered Alabama and took charge of Bibb furnace. He 
has been a citizen of Bibb County ever since, and has effectively 
promoted the construction of steel bridges and good roads, 
introduced road machines, and interested himself generally in 
the welfare of this quarter of the mineral belt. As administrator 
of the estate left by the pioneer iron-master, Jonathan Newton 
Smith (whose daughter he married in 1882), Mr. Fitch has had 
charge of extensive coal and iron interests of Bibb and adjoining 
counties. The celebrated Belle Ellen and Piper coal mines are 
on the Smith estate. 

As soon as Major Peter and associates acquired control of the 
Brierfield plants and mineral lands they organized the Brierfield 
Coal and Iron Company, of which Major Peter was made presi- 
dent and general manager, and John Gr. Murray, secretary. 

Thomas Jefferson Peter was born in Baltimore, January 7, 
1835. His parents moved to Cincinnati in 1839 and he entered 
Saint Xavier College. At the age of sixteen he joined an en- 
gineer corps in the location and construction of the Ohio and Mis- 
sissippi Railroad, and was engaged in the capacity of engineer 
on various railroads until 1855, when he was appointed city 
surveyor of Cincinnati. In 1857 he was elected city civil engineer 
of Cincinnati. He held this position for two years, and was 
then appointed chief engineer of the Eastern Texas Railroad. 
In 1861 he returned to Cincinnati and was re-elected city civil 



326 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



engineer. Two years later he commenced the construction of 
the Whitewater Valley Railroad, in Indiana, as engineer and con- 
tractor. From that time until 1868, when he removed to Kansas, 
his contracting firm built many hundred miles of railroad in the 
Western States. Chief among them was the Atchison, Topeka, 
and Santa Fe Road. He pushed this road to the western boun- 
dary of Kansas. As general manager he adopted the policies 
which caused a rapid development of that section of the country 
and the wonderful growth of this railroad system. One of the 
policies that he inaugurated was the carrying of coal at the bare 
cost of transportation to assist in development. He located valu- 
able seams of coal in Kansas by the use of diamond drills, and 
began the development of mines in Osage County. 

In 1873 he resigned as general manager of the Atchison, To- 
peka, and Santa Fe Railroad, and from that time until 1881 he 
devoted his energies to the mining of coal and manufacture of 
coke in Kansas and Colorado. In the fall of 1881 he returned 
to his home in St. Louis with the intention of retiring from 
business. It was at this time that he was induced to visit Ala- 
bama and his interest in the Brierfield property immediately 
followed. 

The Cahaba coal field was at that period but little known. As 
mentioned in former chapters even the " bomb proofs " had been 
abandoned and were overgrown in weeds. There was no Blocton 
then. Belle Ellen, Hargrove, Piper, Coleman, Garnsey, and all 
the famous group west of Blocton were not then even dreamed 
of. John R. McLean (present day owner and editor-in-chief of 
the Washington Post and of the Cincinnati Inquirer) sent a 
geologist, Sayler, down to inspect the region. 

Mr. Sayler located coal at the points where Hargrove mines 
are now operated, and where the Cane Creek mines of the Besse- 
mer Company were later opened. His investigation led to the 
immediate development of this portion of the Cahaba field. The 
Brierfield Coal and Iron Company took the lead at once in mining 
coal here. Major Peter's first step was the consolidation of his 
various properties. A railroad line was then built from Brierfield 
to the furnaces. Reconstruction work was commenced, and a 
million dollars, it was said, was put into improvements. The 
furnace and rolling mill were remodeled, a large nail factory 
built, and coke ovens and a coal washer constructed. Coal mines 
were opened in Shelby County at Petersburg. In a short time 



THE NORTHEASTERN COUNTIES 1870-1890 327 



they had an output of about five hundred tons a day, part of 
which was sold on the market, and part washed and made into 
coke for the use of the furnace. The company opened up mines 
on what are known as the Overturned Measures. They found 
workable seams of high quality, but had difficulty in obtaining 
miners as there were no miners in Alabama accustomed to work- 
ing on steep pitching seams. It was necessary, therefore, to 
import men from Pennsylvania. They were brought down by 
the train load. In the development and operation of the rolling 
mill and the nail factory it was also found that there were no 
operatives in the State that could be had in sufficient quantities 
for these plants, and again the company had to resort to im- 
portation of men from Pennsylvania and other States. Five 
hundred men were on the pay roll. As soon as the product of 
the nail plant had been perfected, Brierfield nails began to get a 
big hold in the Southeastern States, but by the time they had 
been on the market for a year, the iron cut nails began to be sup- 
planted by steel cut nails which they had just begun to manu- 
facture in the Pittsburg district, through the perfecting of steel 
for commercial usages. Within a year the price of iron cut 
nails dropped from a basis of $3 per keg to $1.90 per keg, and 
the Brierfield Coal and Iron Company found that instead of 
enjoying a handsome profit, they must lose money if they con- 
tinued in operation on this basis. Finally in 1888 the company 
was forced to go into the hands of a receiver. 

Nothing daunted, Thomas J. Peter undertook and carried 
through a reorganization of this company, and created the 
Alabama Iron and Steel Company, a company which took over 
the properties formerly held by the Brierfield Coal and Iron 
Company. Major Peter believed that steel could be made a com- 
mercial success in this district so that he could again put the 
Brierfield nail plant in operation. He changed the furnace from 
a coke furnace to a charcoal furnace, and during the next few 
years this property made a considerable reputation by its Bibb 
charcoal iron. The panic of 1890 struck this company just as it 
was struggling into existence, and continued financial difficulties 
throughout the country from 1890 to 1894 again forced this 
company into the hands of a receiver in May of that year. 
Major Peter was appointed receiver, and finally succumbed to 
the terrible strain that he had gone through in endeavoring to 
make this pioneer movement a success. He died in October, 



328 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



1896. Since 1890 the wire nail in turn has driven the steel cut 
nail from the market so that the nail plant at Brierfield became 
completely worthless. There was much litigation over the prop- 
erty. The body of employees sought work elsewhere. The 
town became practically depopulated and the works sold for scrap 
iron. The company's affairs were subsequently reorganized by 
the heirs of Senator Plumb of Kansas and his associates. The 
property is now owned by the Southern Mineral Land Company 
of which Herman Pfaff is president. With the exception of 
some of its coal lands which are being operated under lease, it is 
not in operation at present. 

Major Peter's son, George F. Peter, is president of the South- 
ern Coal and Coke Company and of the Climax Coal Company. 
He was born in St. Louis, Missouri, April 5, 1869, and was 
graduated from Yale University in 1890. In the fall of that year 
he came to Alabama and was associated with Alabama Iron and 
Steel Company at Brierfield as charcoal manager, and later as 
superintendent until the winter of 1894. In August of 1895 
he began the development of the coal mine at Maylene, and late 
in the nineties opened up Glen Carbon. 

About the time that the Brierfield plant was reconstructed by 
Major Peter, the veteran iron-master of this section of Alabama, 
Horace Ware (termed by Senator Morgan facile princeps among 
the pioneer iron-masters) left Alabama to manufacture iron 
in Texas. In casting his lot in that distant section, he enrolled 
himself among the pioneers in such work in the Lone Star State. 
Having been accustomed to the handling and use of only the very 
richest and best brown ores in Bibb, Shelby, Talladega, and Cal- 
houn counties, he said that if he could find another deposit that 
would produce an iron nearly or equal to these he would purchase 
the same. He prospected in Georgia, Arkansas, and Texas, and 
in this latter State, in Marion County, near the town of Jefferson, 
he found a rather wide expanse of surface brown ore that in 
quality came up to his expectations and requirements. This 
property was owned by a Mr. Kelly who in the early seventies 
had started in a small way making cow-bells, and, of course, 
to the far west of that locality, where prairies and stock rais- 
ing abounded, he met with a reasonable success. 

Extending his enterprise further Mr. Kelly erected an un- 
pretentious old style blast furnace of about four tons' capacity, of 
an 1850 make. Horace Ware bought this plant in 1881 at a 



THE NORTHEASTERN COUNTIES 1870-1890 329 



cost of $25,000 and at once razed the quaint little stack and 
built a furnace of modern style and equipment, which he named 
Ware furnace. He was the president, while George W. Brown 
became manager, and W. C. Denson secretary and treasurer. 
Prior to the Kelly enterprise, and, in fact, before the Civil War, 
there was a primitive furnace plant at Rusk, Texas, which was 
destroyed during the war and revived afterwards under the 
management of the State. Iron making in Texas had been very 
limited, and had accordingly failed to draw skilled workmen. For 
this reason Mr. Ware was put to the expense and trouble of taking 
skilled laborers from Alabama. He operated the Ware furnace 
for three years and made a charcoal car wheel iron that rapidly 
advanced to the front rank of such brands in the Western markets. 
In 1884, on account of the very great distance from his Alabama 
home, and his advancing years, Mr. Ware sold his Texas furnace 
property to the Marshal Car Wheel Company. 1 He returned to 
his Birmingham home where he died six years later. 

He had given to the iron industry of Alabama fifty years of 
continuous effort and indefatigable energy. Beginning in the 
eighteen-twenties, as a boy, he advanced step by step from the 
making of forge blooms to charcoal furnace pig iron, and from 
pig metal to rolling mil] wrought bar and plate, and from this 
to semi-steel on a limited scale, and was first directly instru- 
mental in proving that Alabama ore and iron were specially 
adapted to the manufacture of the highest and best grades of 
steel products. He was the discoverer of large bodies of brown 
ore in Shelby and adjoining counties and laid the foundations 
for much important work not only in the northeastern counties, 
but up in the Highland Rim as well, for he was one of the first 
enthusiasts and investors in the Sheffield district. He crowned 
his useful life-work as a pioneer iron-master in the great com- 
monwealth of Texas. 

1 Now, twenty-eight years after Horace Ware developed and established 
the superior value of these Texas ores for car wheel and other high grade 
purposes, the mineral property is beginning to attract the attention of 
Birmingham capitalists and manufacturers. 



CHAPTER XXI 



THE GREAT BOOM OF BIRMINGHAM 1886-1887 

Colonel DeBardeleben assembles new forces. "His siren tongue lures 
many a man upon the rocks of Alabama." David Roberts takes a look 
at Birmingham District. Biographical sketch of Mr. Roberts. Incor- 
poration of DeBardeleben Coal and Iron Company. Founding of 
Bessemer. Sensation of the day. "I am the eagle." Industrial enter- 
prises of early eighteen-eighties. Entrance of William P. Pinckard. 
Review of Mr. Pinckard's pioneer work and present day operations. 
Introduction of Major R. H. Elliott. John Dowling's career. First 
step in modern blast furnace practice. " Alice " goes into eclipse. " King 
David " at the lead. General survey of mineral district. Contemporary 
events. Colonel DeBardeleben's picturesque methods. Rise of Bir- 
mingham. Incorporators of first banks. List of pioneer land companies. 
Formation of House of Milner and Kettig. Sketch of William H. Kettig. 
Influence of DeBardeleben Coal and Iron Company. DeBardeleben 
plays him the tune of the chief. Coming of the great Boom. Caldwell's 
vivid account. Jefferson County lifted from rank of pauper. Impetus 
given to State. Birmingham introduced to the world. Men of the Old 
Guard. 

SHORTLY after the Mary Pratt furnace went into 
blast Colonel DeBardeleben was forced to make for the 
Southwest again. Camping out on his Loredo ranch 
he soon pulled himself together. Recuperation with him, like 
everything else, was swift-footed. His strong-winged tempera- 
ment has always carried him triumphantly over obstacles that 
would make the average man collapse. No matter how blasted 
his business affairs, his health, and his fate one day, a good 
night's sleep will change for him by next sunrise the very face 
of destiny. There is that in him, indeed, the urge, the verve 
— born between the dark and the dawn — to which men give 
the name of genius. So, fortified anew, and his brain again teem- 
ing with big-drawn schemes, DeBardeleben started back to Ala- 
bama in the fall of 1885. He stopped off as usual at San 
Antonio, where he joined an old Scotch crony ? Alexander 
Conechar, "lineal descendant," Conechar always claimed, "of 
Conechar, King of the Scots." 

Mr. Conechar was in the employ of the largest phosphate 
mining concern in the world, whose headquarters were at Charles- 



GREAT BOOM OF BIRMINGHAM 1886-1887 331 



ton, South Carolina. One of the firm representatives, David 
Roberts, was at that very time in San Antonio. Conechar said 
he would introduce DeBardeleben to him. No one knew better 
than DeBardeleben that if the forces of capital and influence 
represented by Mr. Roberts' firm were once enlisted on Alabama 
soil they could whirl the State around. At the meeting he 
therefore drove straight to the point. " Those pictures of De- 
Bardeleben," Llewellyn Johns has said, " those winning smiles, 
and that Italian hand — ah ! " and he nods his head, " Y' know, 
y know ! There 's never a time they failed ! " 

" It 's many a man," once exclaimed Augustine Smythe, " has 
been lured upon the rocks of Alabama by that siren tongue of 
DeBardeleben ! " Just as Du Pont and Caldwell, as Hillman, 
Sloss, Ensley, Underwood, and M. H. Smith had "fallen," so 
now did David Roberts. Instead of returning, according to his 
plan, to Charleston^ Mr. Roberts agreed to visit DeBardeleben and 
take a look at the Birmingham District. Now a look at the " Bir- 
mingham District " with Colonel DeBardeleben as its interpreter 
was usually fatal to any man with money in his pocket. It meant 
excitement; it meant investment; and, to savor the melodra- 
matic, it meant the dream of millions. 

When David Roberts left Birmingham, under the spell of Red 
Mountain, of the coal fields of the Warrior, the Coosa, and the 
Cahaba, he carried a six months' option on 30,000 acres of De- 
Bardeleben's lands. He at once interested his business associ- 
ates, Robert Adger, Andrew Adger, E. H. Lopez, Augustine T. 
Smythe of Charleston, and Alexander Brown of Baltimore. Not 
stopping to mark time, Mr. Roberts then went across, engaged 
the capital and the enthusiastic cooperation of several of the big 
commercial men on the other side. Among them were F. F. 
Gordon, C. C. Wyllie, E. H. Watt, Dilwynne Parrish, and Alfred 
Parrish, — all of London, England. Thus in 1885 there was 
added to the Cleveland iron-masters, who, under Thomas Whit- 
well and James Bowron, Sr., began work in the Tennessee Moun- 
tains in 1874, a second group of Englishmen exerting influence 
upon the mineral development of the South. 

David Roberts was himself a Welshman. Anglesey was his 
birthplace, — a solitary little farm on that treeless and cromlech- 
planted island, near the hundred-year-old copper mines of Parys 
and Mona and the ruins of the old Roman camp of Holyhead. 
It is a forlorn, low-lying, rugged little island, sea-lashed and 



332 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



wind-beaten, shivering under ancient Druid memories, as under 
that cold mantle of the deep-sea fog that wraps it more than half 
of every year. Like to so many of his kin, young Roberts early 
felt the call to some far country. With another boy whom he 
knew in London, a bishop's son, he made plans to venture into 
Australia, and travel by horseback a thousand miles into the 
interior, " armed with many weapons," and take up sheep 
farming. With their passage engaged, the elated boys were at 
Liverpool on point of embarking, when the bishop himself came 
down to the dock to take a look at the ship. Scenting what might 
have turned a case of shanghaiing, the bishop got his son from 
off the gangway, and a London banker friend offered David 
Roberts a berth in his Bond Street office, suggesting the wisdom 
of deferring Australia and of trying the Rocky Mountains of 
North America instead at a later day. 

The "later day" did not come, however, until 1873, when 
young Roberts, grown conservative and switched off from even 
the Rocky Mountain idea, came across to Charleston, South Caro- 
lina, with solid English interests backing him, and eventually 
became allied with the leading business men of that city. He 
married Miss Belle Sumter Yates, a Charleston girl, there, for 
whom at a later time the Belle Sumter mines, now owned by the 
Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company, were named. 

So it came about that late in the year of 1885 David Roberts 
found his way to the Alabama field. With sure financial backing 
on both sides of the Atlantic, the Roberts option was taken up 
for one million dollars. DeBardeleben threw in his own indi- 
vidual holdings, and the DeBardeleben Coal and Iron Company 
was incorporated early in 1886 and capitalized at the outset with 
two million dollars. This doubled the Ensley deal and made 
another sensation. Colonel DeBardeleben was elected president 
of the company ; David Roberts, vice-president and general man- 
ager; and Andrew Adger, secretary and treasurer. The stock- 
holders and board of directors comprised these officers and the 
business associates of Mr. Roberts in Charleston and London. 
On March 22, of 1886, there appeared in the Birmingham Age- 
Herald this little story : 

" Sunday morning when the 1 : 05 passenger train on the 
Georgia Pacific road left the depot there were three men on board. 
They were H. F. DeBardeleben, Augustine T. Smythe, of Charles- 
ton, and an Age-Herald reporter. Mr. DeBardeleben said: 'I 



GREAT BOOM OF BIRMINGHAM 1886-1887 333 



have a big scheme working that will be news to the people of 
Birmingham, which will develop in a few days/ When the three 
men stepped on board they all scattered and were soon apparently 
sleeping in their respective seats. Mr. DeBardeleben's head 
rested on a large mysterious roll wrapped securely in white paper. 

"The party stopped at the Kimball House (in Atlanta). 
After breakfast the three fellow-travelers met. Mr. DeBardele- 
ben said to the reporter, ' Hello, what are you doing here ? ' The 
reply was, i What are you doing here ? ' 

" ' Oh, nothing ; only going over to Charleston on a little 
business/ 

" ' Does it mean good to Birmingham ? ' 

" tf Come up to my room and we will see/ ... In Mr. DeBar- 
deleben's room was the mysterious roll, which he began to un- 
wrap. It was a large map of North Alabama, highly colored and 
platted off to show the possessions of different parties. He said 
as he pointed to a spot on the map thirteen miles below Birming- 
ham around Jonesboro : ' Here is where we are going to establish 
a young city. ... I am now on my way to Charleston with Mr. 
Smythe and we are going to organize a company. . . . We are 
going to build up a city that will contain eight furnaces within 
two years, and we propose to extend two railroad lines touching 
Tuskaloosa and another outlet to be determined on. We are 
going to build the city solid from the bottom and establish it on 
a rock financial basis. No stockholder will be allowed to come in 
who can't make smoke. It will take $100,000 to come in, and the 
man who can make the most smoke can have the most stock/ 

" ' What is your object in going so far from Birmingham to do 
all this?' 

" ' My dear sir, thirteen miles is not far from Birmingham. In 
less than two years the two cities will have a population of two 
hundred thousand. The story of the place is not yet told. It is 
only a village. I have bought in the past two weeks $125,000 
in real estate, centrally located, that I have paid high prices for. 
That property is not for sale in Birmingham. I am going North 
and place it on the market/ 

" ' When will you begin operation on your proposed scheme ? ' 

" ( At once. We will organize Monday afternoon, and I will 
visit New York to place some Birmingham property on the mar- 
ket, and will then go through to Pittsburg to order material for 
two furnace plants and make arrangements for the steel plant 
we propose establishing at J onesboro/ " 

The neighborhood around Old Jonesboro was, in fact, the 
right location. Here were the raw materials, and this was the 
most advantageous place for a great steel mill. 

DeBardeleben says: "After months of prospecting and of 
thought, deliberation and travelling and inspection for miles and 



334 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



miles around, and wearing out several fox-trotting horses, going 
from Tannehill to Rising Fawn in Georgia, I could not but feel 
that here was the opportunity for industries and manufactories 
of many and various kinds. The place has at command the en- 
trance to two coal fields; is, in fact, the gateway to the Cahaba 
and Warrior fields. Thus by her geographical and geological 
position she commands and owns three of the greatest commercial 
banks in the South. Each, with the proper endorsement, will 
honor the greatest drafts that may be made upon them. The first 
is the Red Ore Bank. The next in importance is the Warrior Coal 
Bank. . . . The next is the Cahaba Coal Bank. There is a 
whole township of coal in the Dailey and Montevallo basin, to 
say nothing of the Blocton and Scottville ends. . . . These fields 
are intended by nature to feed some great creature. I could easily 
say that these banks would sustain and care for a population of 
half a million people. There are some few of us who are fully 
aware of the ore situation. The red ore tributary to this location 
has greater tonnage and is better in quality than all the balance 
of the State." 

One of the DeBardeleben Company's mining camps, known as 
Iron City, was within bow-shot of the site of old Fort Jonesboro, 
whose history was related in the early records of Jefferson County. 
It is just about thirteen miles southwest of Birmingham. This 
was selected as the center of the new town. Here in a pine-board 
shack, at the office of the Pinckard and DeBardeleben Land Com- 
pany, the men of the DeBardeleben Coal and Iron Company 
came together to draw up the by-laws of the town. 

" Even then," observed David Roberts, " the notion of steel 
making in Alabama was buzzing around. It was Mr. DeBarde- 
leben's idea to make that particular point a steel-making center. 
We all cast about for a name that might suggest the steel idea. 
I remember we had quite a discussion in the office, and then De- 
Bardeleben, who was always very happy about things of that 
sort, you know, said ' Bessemer — call it Bessemer' — and we 
did." 

Thus, in tribute to Sir Henry Bessemer, inventor of the steel- 
making system that revolutionized the world, the mining camp 
of Old Fort Jonesboro was given name. The realty company 
organized to carry on the work of making this town was incor- 
porated January 6, 1887, with DeBardeleben as president and 
his associate officers and directors, A. M. Adger, David Roberts, 



GREAT BOOM OF BIRMINGHAM 1886-1887 335 



Moses E. Lopez, A. T. Smythe, and William Berney. The 
company was capitalized at two and a half millions, which was 
divided into twenty thousand shares. The subscriptions for 
stock amounted in one day to seven hundred and fifty thousand 
dollars, and then the Charleston parties, who held one-half in- 
terest in the whole, called the sale off, deciding to keep the lots 
for further speculation. To quote the old county records : " The 
object of this company is to acquire lands either by subscription 
to its capital stock, by purchase, or otherwise; to build a town 
to be called Bessemer, and lay off property for that purpose; 
to lay out parks and to build industrial establishments and 
residences." 

Plans were outlined by DeBardeleben and Roberts for stu- 
pendous operations, comprising further railroad construction; 
the opening of coal and ore mines and limestone quarries, " such 
as would throw in the shade any other operations so far done in 
Alabama " ; the building of a mammoth brood of furnaces, roll- 
ing mills, pipe works, every manufacturing concern that could 
employ coal and iron, besides the establishment of many other 
sorts and kinds of industries ; real estate companies, and, in fine, 
another city such as might overtop Birmingham itself, throw 
Caldwell out, and make every Elyton Land Company project 
" look like small potatoes." For, as may be surmised, there was 
by this time a lively feud between DeBardeleben and the other 
operators of the Birmingham District. 

" I was the eagle," Chief DeBardeleben has cried, " and I 
wanted to eat all the craw-fish I could, — swallow up all the 
little fellows, and I did it! " Among the enterprises. now begun 
were the Bessemer rolling mills, the water works, and the dummy 
railroad into Birmingham. DeBardeleben ran down to New 
Orleans and through Major Burke got possession of what was 
left of all the cotton exposition buildings. He transported the 
whole layout to Bessemer, and the first group of Bessemer mills 
and shops was made up of a curious mixture. The Jamaica 
building became a portion of the rolling mills, while the Monte- 
zuma building served as the town hotel. DeBardeleben visited 
Charleston, St. Louis, Nashville, Memphis, and Louisville, and 
came back each time with a package of new fireworks to boom 
along his town of Bessemer. In conjunction with Pelzer and 
Rogers, the Charleston cotton firm, he incorporated the Bessemer 
Steel Company, but did not make steel. Later, he organized 



336 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



the Little Belle Furnace Company. Meanwhile David Roberts 
managed the DeBardeleben Coal and Iron Company and handled 
all the detail work. 

Finding they needed more ore, DeBardeleben cast his eyes 
again upon the Oxmoor or Eureka furnace properties, which he 
had once owned. This company had been struggling along under 
the control of the Cincinnati and Louisville factions since Colonel 
Sloss' resignation, and Thomas A. Mack was serving as manager 
of the company. M. H. Smith took a hand in helping DeBarde- 
leben get majority stock, and in short order forty thousand more 
acres of mineral properties were added to the DeBardeleben 
holdings, together with the historic Oxmoor furnaces. The 
Mineral Railroad was extended by Mr. Smith to Champion, Blue 
Creek, and Blocton. DeBardeleben now had transportation facil- 
ities and one hundred and fifty thousand acres of mineral prop- 
erties — more coal and iron ore than had any other concern in 
the South during that decade. Every part and parcel of these 
properties is owned and operated to-day by the Tennessee 
Company. 

Among the men closely associated with Colonel DeBardeleben 
at this period was William P. Pinckard. In the operation of the 
DeBardeleben Company there were, in addition to David Roberts 
and the London and Charleston capitalists, Major R. H. Elliott, 
consulting engineer and superintendent of construction; Llew- 
ellyn Johns, mining engineer; and the two expert furnacemen, 
John Dowling and James Shannon. 

W. P. Pinckard, owner and president of the Big Sandy Iron 
and Steel Company of the present day, was one of the most ac- 
tive and enterprising of the associates of Aldrich and DeBarde- 
leben. An Alabamian by birth, he is descended from old Vir- 
ginia stock. His ancestors were early English colonists closely 
related to the "Washington, Madison, and Monroe families. His 
father, Peyton Jett Pinckard, an officer in the Confederate ser- 
vice, was originally from Georgia, but had settled in Chambers 
County, Alabama, early in the eighteen-fifties. It was here on 
July 15, 1852, that William Peyton Pinckard was born. His 
term in the little county school was supplemented by a literary 
course at Old Howard College, Marion, and a term or two at the 
University of Virginia, where, in 1874, he took a degree in con- 
stitutional and commercial law. Returning then to Alabama, 
he "hoisted his own flag," as he expresses it, at Opelika, and 



GREAT BOOM OF BIRMINGHAM 1886-1887 337 



shortly afterwards was admitted to practice in the Supreme 
Court of the State. He became special attorney for the Corbin 
Banking Company in 1882, -and took up his residence in 
Tuskaloosa. 

Of a decidedly venturesome turn, he was naturally drawn to 
the Birmingham District, where, in 1886, he entered the ranks of 
the pioneer coal and iron men. At that time, as has been con- 
noted, the term coal and iron man implied banker, broker, real 
estate agent, lawyer, engineer, and trader. Not only did Mr. 
Pinckard become identified in various ways with the DeBardeleben 
Coal and Iron Company, the Bessemer Land and Improvement 
Company, the Bessemer and Birmingham Railroad Company, 
and the Bessemer Rolling Mills, but he also formed with De- 
Bardeleben the Pinckard and DeBardeleben Company that be- 
came a pronounced factor in the early development of the real 
estate and mining interests of the mineral district. 

" Bessemer was born in my office," Mr. Pinckard relates. His 
Iron City office was for some time main headquarters of "the 
Old Guard." Dozens of industrial projects first saw the light of 
day there. Pinckard was president and constructor of the old 
dummy line, the first railroad venture to connect Bessemer with 
Birmingham. Later, he branched off in the newspaper field, 
founded the Birmingham Herald Company, subsequently organ- 
ized into the Age-Herald. To look considerably further ahead, 
it was William Pinckard who acquired the entire capital stock 
of the Pioneer Mining and Manufacturing Company in 1898, 
and he was instrumental in bringing about the purchase of these 
properties by the great Republic Iron and Steel Company. Since 
that time Mr. Pinckard has, like the Woodward Iron Company, 
" played a lone hand " in the Birmingham District. His present 
day operations were begun in 1899 and were based on Roupes 
Valley mineral properties. They were originally prospected by 
T. H. Aldrich. The development work here is yet in its infancy, 
but it is a big-shaped outline and full of possibilities. 

Before entering the DeBardeleben Company Major Elliott 
had been acting chief engineer of the Louisville, New Orleans, 
and Texas Railroad, which is now a portion of the Illinois Cen- 
tral. Since the Civil War he had had an extended and diversi- 
fied experience in his profession, having had in his charge the 
engineering and construction work of the Savannah and Florida, 
Atlantic and Gulf, the Brunswick and Albany, and the Georgia 

22 



338 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



Western railroads. His father before him, Stephen Elliott, 
first Episcopal bishop of Georgia, had taken a hand in project- 
ing the first steam railroad lines connecting the Southern sea- 
board cities with the West. For generations members of the 
Elliott family have stood at the front in Southern affairs. Major 
Elliott's mother was Miss Charlotte Barnwell of the Charleston 
Barnwells. Born in old Buford County, South Carolina, in 1846, 
R. H. Elliott was educated at the Chatham Academy of Savan- 
nah. During the Civil War he saw field service for the Confed- 
eracy, being attached to the Seventh Cavalry, and later to the 
Signal Corps. After a term at the Virginia Military Institute, 
from 1865 to 1867, he entered upon his career as an engineer. 
While attached to the DeBardeleben Coal and Iron Company, 
Major Elliott opened up the Blue Creek mines and began con- 
struction work on the Bessemer furnaces. Later, in 1887, he ac- 
cepted the place of chief engineer with the Kansas City, Mem- 
phis, and Birmingham Railroad, and then with the Kansas City, 
Fort Scott and Memphis Railroad. Since 1890 his headquarters 
as consulting engineer have been in Birmingham. 

Llewellyn Johns did not enter the service of the DeBardeleben 
Company until after his resignation from the Pratt Coal and 
Iron Company, which was shortly after it was acquired by 
the Tennessee Company. He was appointed general super- 
intendent and extended the operations at Blue Creek, opened 
Henry-Ellen and Greeley, and had under his charge by 1890 
the Bessemer and Oxmoor furnaces, the coke ovens, and ore and 
coal mines. 

John Dowling, an expert young furnaceman, entered into the 
Birmingham District first in the summer of 1878, coming from 
St. Louis, Missouri, with two other iron-men who had been sent 
for by Colonel Sloss to make a test of the Oxmoor furnaces and 
the raw materials of the Birmingham District. After a three 
months' stay, Mr. Dowling engaged with the Rising Fawn Iron 
Company of Georgia, which was under the presidency of J. C. 
Warner. This furnace had been making from twenty to twenty- 
five tons per day, and after a period of six months, increased 
the output to one hundred and twenty-five tons per day, under 
Dowling's hand. A fine grade of foundry iron was turned out 
here. After three years of successful service Dowling took charge 
of the furnaces of the Roane Iron Company, at Rockwood, 
Tennessee, under the presidency of H. S. Chamberlain. From 



GREAT BOOM OF BIRMINGHAM 1886-1887 339 



this company he stepped over to the DeBardeleben Coal and 
Iron Company. Here he remodeled King Henry or No. 3, at 
Bessemer, increasing the output to one hundred and ninety-five 
tons per day. This was record-breaking for that time. No. 3 ? s 
output had never before that exceeded one hundred tons and its 
average was ninety. The first step in the distinctly modern blast 
furnace practice in the South was now taken. Alice furnace was 
eclipsed — " Little Alice," — that up to 1887 had carried off all 
the laurels in the Birmingham District. The attention of the 
Southern iron making world now centered on the Bessemer group. 
These furnaces became celebrated in the district by the names 
of King David and Queen Anne, called after David Roberts' 
children, David ? Jr., and " little Miss Anne " ; and King Henry 
or No. 3, after DeBardeleben and King John or No. 4, after 
Llewellyn Johns. Mr. Dowling is at the present time in charge 
of the construction of the Woodstock Company's new plants. 

DeBardeleben eventually united all his scattered properties 
under the one company, DeBardeleben Coal and Iron Company. 
This company was then reorganized and put on a basis of thirteen 
million dollars, three millions of which was in bonds. These 
figures kindled the country like live wires. "And every sheaf 
in the field," said DeBardeleben, humorously ? "rose up and 
bowed to my sheaf!" 

A general survey of the mineral district at the time of the 
launching of this great DeBardeleben Coal and Iron Company 
(1886-87) shows thirty-three coal and iron companies, a few 
of which are in existence to-day. First there was Enoch Ens- 
ley leading with his $1,500,000 Pratt Coal and Iron Company, 
which, as has been noted, comprehended the Pratt Coal and 
Coke Company, the Alice Furnace Company, and the Linn Iron 
Works. Truman H. Aldrich's Cahaba Coal Mining Company 
followed as a close second. Then came the Woodward Iron 
Company, capitalized at $1,000,000. Then in successive order, 
the Eureka or Oxmoor Furnace Company, capitalized at $830,- 
000; the Sloss Furnace Company, and the Brierfield Coal and 
Iron Company, each capitalized at $750,000; the Woodstock 
and Shelby Iron Companies, $600,000 each; the Coalburg Coal 
and Coke Company, $500,000; Henry-Ellen coal mines, $450,- 
000; the Birmingham rolling mills and Mary Pratt Furnace 
Company at $300,000 each; the Tecumseh Iron Company, the 
Milner Coal and Railroad Company, and the Virginia and Ala- 



340 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



bama Mining and Manufacturing Company, representing each 
$200,000; the Coosa, $125,000; the Montevallo Coal Mining 
Company, the Williamson Furnace Company, and Pierce Warrior 
Mining Company, each $120,000; the Anniston Car Wheel and 
Axle Works, Helena Coal Company, Watts Coal and Coke Com- 
pany, and Morris Mining Company, each of the four capitalized 
at $100,000 ; the Birmingham Iron Works, the Bibb Branch Coal 
and Coke Company, and the Mabel Mining Company, at $50,000 
each; and so on down to the six remaining minor concerns of 
1886; the Jefferson foundry, the Iron Bridge Manufacturing 
Company, Aiken and Lightons foundries, Beggs stove factory, 
Boland's foundry, and the Birmingham Chain Works, represent- 
ing all the way from $30,000 down to $10,000. 

Among the realty companies that were early established by 
DeBardeleben and his associates, four of the most important 
were the Bessemer Land and Improvement Company, the Bir- 
mingham-Ensley Land and Improvement Company (following 
Enoch Ensley's boom town scheme, which will be noted later), the 
College Hill Land Company, and the East End Land Company. 

Besides DeBardeleben, the Birmingham-Ensley Land and Im- 
provement Company comprised in its list of officers R. H. Pear- 
son, W. P. Pinckard, J. W. Sloss, J. W. Tomlinson, Robert 
Warnock, J. H. Slaton, J. W. Reed, and Andrew Adger. Its 
object was as follows: 

" To carry on general manufacturing and industrial business, 
to buy, sell, hold lands, and improve same, laying them off into 
lots, streets, parks, race-track, lakes; to quarry limestone and 
prepare same for market; to manufacture pig iron steel, and all 
other articles which can be made with coal or coke and iron ore, 
or from wood, iron, or steel alone, or in conjunction with any 
other material; to erect buildings, dwellings, stores, and shops, 
and all machinery to accomplish the ends sought ; to build and 
operate tramways, railroads, and to construct water works." 

College Hill Land Company, which was organized December 
7, 1886, with W. P. Pinckard as president, purposed merely to 
acquire lands. Its additional officers were A. M. Adger, W. H. 
Johnston, M. E. Lopez, and Augustine Smythe. Mr. Pinckard's 
name again appears in the East End Land Company, together 
with names of T. H. Aldrich and A. M. Adger. 

The pioneer coal and iron men were the incorporators of the 
first banks as well as of the realty companies of the mineral dis- 



GREAT BOOM OF BIRMINGHAM 1885-1887 341 



trict. After old " Linn's Folly" comes the Berney National 
Bank. Among its first stockholders were DeBardeleben, Enoch 
Ensley, T. T. Hillman, W. T. Underwood, and John H. Inman. 
Of the Central Bank, among its incorporators with William Ber- 
ney and Robert Jemison, Sr., were T. H. Aldrich ; of the Jefferson 
County Savings Bank, Christian F. Enslen and his sons, Engene 
and Charles Enslen; of the Alabama National Bank, Joseph F. 
Johnston, J. T. Hardie, E. W. Rucker, J. W. Sloss, and J. W. 
Johnston. 

An event of more or less bearing in a commercial way at this 
period was the formation of the house of Milner and Kettig. In 
the decade preceding, Major Willis Milner established the pioneer 
general supply and machinery business of the district. In 1886 
he took into partnership William H. Kettig. Young Kettig, then 
about twenty-two years old, was a thorough worker with a dash 
of enterprise about him. He is of German parentage, but a 
native of Louisville, Kentucky. After a brief term at the public 
schools there, he started life as a shipping clerk on one dollar 
per week. He specialized at length in the hardware and supply 
business, and learned the details of the trade. As an employee 
of the largest firm of its kind in the West, Mr. Kettig had head- 
quarters at St. Louis and built up a big trade, especially through- 
out the South. 

The new firm, Milner and Kettig, assumed a considerable degree 
of importance to the trade in Birmingham. Gathering a big 
stock on hand, it supplied the demand for machinery for mills, 
mines, furnaces, and engines, and also manufactured power 
plant material and supplies for gas works, water works, plumbers, 
gas and steam fitters, and piping equipments for power plants. 
Being the first of its sort on the ground, it was a necessary 
adjunct to the work of making a town like Birmingham. It 
became absorbed in 1904 by the long-established and world- 
known firm of Crane Company, and the branch at Birmingham 
is now one of its twenty-two branches, and is still under the 
management of William H. Kettig. 

A list of the other companies incorporated in 1886 and 1887 
includes the following: The Watts Coal and Iron Company, 
J. F. B. Jackson, Norman W. Smith, Eugene Morehead, A. W. 
Graham; the Alabama Asphalt Mining and Land Company, 
Chas. L. Handy, C. M. Erwin, D. T. Marable, H. L. Watlington; 
Three Rivers Coal and Iron Company, M. L. Hershey, G. W. 



342 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



Ellis ; First National Coal and Iron Land Company, F. W. Miles, 
F. B. Clements ; Peacock Coal, Iron, and Improvement Company, 

B. A. Thompson, J. C. Kyle, P. H. Moore; Central Trust Com- 
pany, E. W. Rucker, H. M. Caldwell, J. W. Johnston, Jos. F. 
Johnston, T. B. Lyons; Birmingham Real Estate and Investment 
Company, B. F. Roden, W. H. Morris, J. F. B. Jackson, J. H. — » 
Bankhead, W. D. McCurdy, J. W. Moore; the Southern Bridge 
Company, W. J. Cameron, E. W. Linn ; Birmingham Iron Works, 

J. T. Hardie, Wm. Hardie ; Birmingham Bridge and Bolt Works, 

C. W. Wood; Smith Sons Gin and Machine Company, A. W. 
Smith, J. W. Sloss, D. L. Smith, Enoch Ensley ; Southern Foun- 
dry and Manufacturing Company, Wm. Veitch, George Veitch, 
Jacob Schmidt, W. Barclay; Birmingham Chain Works, B. F. 
Roden, Oliver Weiser; Birmingham Axe and Tool Company, 
J. D. Moore, W. A. Handley, B. F. Moore, C. L. Jeffords; Bir- 
mingham Machine and Foundry Company, R. W. Boland; Red 
Mountain Mining and Manufacturing Company, J. T. Milner, 
Geo. McLaughlin; Avondale Land Company, J. W. Johnston 
(president of the Georgia Pacific Railroad) and A. B. John- 
ston ; North Highlands Company and North Birmingham Build- 
ing Association, John W. Johnston; Clifton Land Company, 
B. F. Roden; the East End Land and Improvement Company, 
R. H. Pearson, T. B. Lyons, Geo. L. Morris, J. V. Richards, 
J. W. Johnston, and the insurance firm of Louis V. Clark and 
Company. 

Thus as the list shows, 1886-87 was the birth year of a number 
of important business enterprises which are still operating at the 
present day in Birmingham. These early companies, together 
with the Elyton Land Company, laid the foundation for much 
of the development work of modern Birmingham. 

Moreover, this was the period of the formation of the Sloss 
Iron and Steel Company, and of the Alabama rolling mills; 
and it marked, furthermore, the initial operations of the Pioneer 
Mining and Manufacturing Company, and the incoming of 
the Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company, now a subsid- 
iary company of the United States Steel Corporation. These 
important companies will presently be considered in detail. 

Every sort and kind of manufacturing and mercantile concern, 
realty company, and coal and iron enterprise started up in De- 
Bardeleben's wake. Every concern was whipped up to greater 
speed by the DeBardeleben Coal and Iron Company which now 
led all the rest. Announcement of the birth of the city of Besse- 
mer sounded, in the iron-master's words, like very bugle call. The 
Birmingham District began, indeed, to move. 



GREAT BOOM OF BIRMINGHAM 1886-1887 343 



When DeBardeleben gets full into the swing of speech he talks 
like the early Indian chiefs, his utterances often alive with 
fantastic figures drawn out of the lights and shadows of the wild 
pine woods that were his home. u Break a young mustang into 
a fox-trotting gait, — that 's what we did to the Birmingham 
District," he has said : " There 's nothing like taking a wild 
piece of land, all rock and woods, ground not fit to feed a goat on, 
and turning it into a settlement of men and women, making 
pay rolls, bringing the railroads in, and starting things going. 
There 's nothing like boring a hillside through and turning over 
a mountain. That 's what money does, and that 's what money 's 
for. I like to use money as I use a horse, — to ride ! " The 
times were needing a leader and he felt that the leader was he. 
All his strokes now were bold ones and lucky. " Life," said he, 
" is one big game of poker ! 99 And in it he was surely a heavy 
gambler ! 

" He has a way about him/' says Llewellyn Johns, " that 
takes ! He 's a regular play-actor when you get him started, and 
I can't tell why I like him, but I do ! " 

" Ah, DeBardeleben ! " once exclaimed his good friend, M. H. 
Smith, " he is the darndest man I ever knew in my life ! Why, 
I 've spent thirty millions following that man ! n 

Colonel Shook tells how DeBardeleben once set fire to a crowd 
exclaiming in that way he has : " I know a coal mine, gentle- 
men, in the Birmingham District, where nature herself has driven 
the main entry for clean a hundred miles ! 99 They invested on 
the spot. Indeed, for that magic he had in painting Birming- 
ham, surely he got it from somewhere back of the moon. Per- 
haps it was voice in him of his Hessian forbears, that faraway 
Teutonic dream stuff that bred the Mbelungen Lied. Had this 
soaring imagination but been fed by poet springs, and not wan- 
dered in such alien and unbridled ways, there is no telling what 
gains had been Alabama's. Indeed, for extraordinary vitality and 
physical energy, one recalls in the history of men but one instance 
somewhat similar, that of Benvenuto Cellini. As Cellini upon 
the casting of his Perseus — so, DeBardeleben, upon the casting 
of the Birmingham District. Now did he stride along trium- 
phant, and he played him a jolly tune, the name whereof was 
"The Great Boom of Birmingham." 

Those who heard it, and lived through it, say that in the history 
of all the cities of the South there was nothing like to this. 



344 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



" The boom in San Antonio was nothing to it," says an old 
citizen. " Nowhere in the world did things happen as they hap- 
pened in Birmingham in '86 and '87. Why, men would come in 
at four o'clock in the morning and begin making trades before 
breakfast. Property changed hands as much as four and five 
times a day. Everybody, everywhere, was talking Birmingham. 
Men went crazy two hours after getting here ; they certainly did." 

As has been seen, there were dozens of real estate concerns in 
action, and now dozens more sprang up. Each tried to outboom 
the other, and DeBardeleben outboomed them all. "Little 
Birminghams " started out of the mineral region everywhere 
like mushrooms. A brand-new sensation was born every day. 
More blast furnaces, iron works, coal and iron mines than could 
ever see the light of day in fifty years were projected. The 
intelligence of even the most conservative business men became 
utterly sunk in sensations. "All young and lusty cities must 
go through just such a delirium/' the New York Sun has de- 
clared, " before they get their poise and the saving place of their 
matured senses." 

As for the stock of the Elyton Land Company, it went up like 
the flare of Aladdin's lamp, and poured gold into the hands of 
the early owners of the Jones Valley lands. "The history of 
the Elyton Land Company is the fairy tale of Birmingham," 
says Colonel Shook. In Caldwell's record of this company in 
1886 we find the following : 

" Such a scene of excitement in real estate speculation as was 
presented in Birmingham at this time was perhaps never before 
witnessed in the South. People from all parts of the South 
flocked to Birmingham, attracted by the reports which had spread 
all over the country of the wonderful profits being so rapidly 
realized here by speculation in real estate. Hotels and boarding 
houses were packed to overflowing by eager fortune hunters. 
Almost every prominent window facing on the business streets 
was rented at fabulous prices for real estate offices, while glib- 
tongued speculators never tired of pouring into listening ears 
fabulous stories of the enormous profits being so rapidly realized 
by lucky investors. 

" Day by day the excitement grew. Upon street corners, in 
hotel corridors, and in private parlors, the one theme of conver- 
sation was real estate speculation; young and old, male and 
female, merchant and clerk, minister and layman — everybody 
seemed seized with a desire to speculate in town lots. Conserva- 
tive citizens who in the early stages wisely shook their heads and 



GREAT BOOM OF BIRMINGHAM 1886-1887 345 



predicted disaster to purchasers of property, as prices climbed 
higher and still higher, with scarcely a single exception, ceased 
to bear the market, and when prices had advanced two or three 
hundred per cent above what they had thought to be extravagant, 
entered the market, bought property, and joined the great army 
of boomers. Wilder and wilder the excitement grew. Stranger 
and resident alike plunged into the market, hoping to gather in 
a portion of the golden shower which was now falling in glisten- 
ing sheets upon the Magic City. Each day the office of the 
Elyton Land Company was crowded with a throng of eager 
purchasers, and the president of the company, who alone had 
charge of the sales of the company, was kept busy at the maps 
from morning until night, pricing property and making sales. 
A memorandum of each sale as soon as made was handed over 
to a clerk, who would receive the cash payment and give a receipt 
for the same. In many instances the purchaser would seize his 
receipt and rush out on the street and resell the property at a 
handsome profit before his bond for title could be executed. 

" One instance may be mentioned where a real estate specula- 
tor bought of the Elyton Land Company a large amount of 
property, and in less than three months sold the same at four 
hundred per cent advance. On several occasions during this 
year the president of the company stopped sales, and more than 
one time left the city, but in a few days he would be overwhelmed 
with telegrams urging him to return. Many strangers who came 
to Birmingham during this period did not reach the Elyton Land 
Company at all, but bought property from speculators at prices 
far beyond what they could have bought property for from the 
company in the same locality. 

" During this phenomenal period of excitement all sorts of 
corporations were formed and an endless variety of financial 
schemes were floated. A syndicate would be formed, a tract of 
land purchased, a land company organized, the land being sub- 
scribed for at an immense advance above the purchase price, and 
the stock put upon the market, to be eagerly taken by a confiding 
public, with scarcely a question as to the amount of capitaliza- 
tion. Any number of schemes for building suburban towns con- 
tiguous to Birmingham were organized, and land five and ten 
miles from the city, which had never before been considered 
worth above $10 or $12 per acre, was within a few months valued 
at from $500 to $1,000. Land owners in town and country 
would, by computing their possessions at the public estimate, 
easily figure themselves rich/' 

Jefferson County was now lifted from its rank as the pauper 
county of the State. According to J. W. Du Bose, the county 
had up to this time drawn more funds from the State treasury 
than it had ever contributed. It became an important taxpayer 



346 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



from this date on. All the new business, little and big, when 
added to that already on the ground, brought up the sum total 
to a startling figure. Impetus was given to the Sheffield and 
Anniston districts; the Birmingham District itself, which to 
the outside world frequently spells the whole Alabama mineral 
region, was now lifted up to the whole wide world. It was 
heralded far and abroad as a creature — Pallas-born — wonder- 
ful. Events, indeed, were lifted bodily and carried up to the hill- 
top by a few strong men, — all too few to bring about the ac- 
complishment of the vast and magnificent development they saw 
spread in far, fine lines in the valleys. 

" Those men of the Old Guard," said William Pinckard, " they 
were of big calibre. They had force, character, invention, and 
they had courage and brains. They were true pioneers. And it 
takes the pioneer to dare. He ? 11 bet his last dollar on convic- 
tion. There ? d be no development, no construction, anywhere, if 
somebody did n't take the risk in the beginning, and if everybody 
waited to be cocksure of his money. The work that Aldrich 
and DeBardeleben did has left a lasting impress on the country. 
Those two men deserve the respect and the gratitude of all the 
generations to come. For all will be the beneficiaries in one way 
or another of these two great captains of the Old Guard." 



CHAPTER XXII 



MORE BIG BUSINESS 1886. RECORDS OF SLOSS IRON AND 
STEEL COMPANY AND PIONEER MINING AND 
MANUFACTURING COMPANY 

Option on property of Sloss Furnace Company secured by John W. John- 
ston and Joseph Forney Johnston. John C. Maben raises three millions 
on Wall Street in one day. Option taken up. Colonel Sloss retires. 
Brief resume of his achievements. Organization of Sloss Iron and Steel 
Company. J. F. Johnston elected first president. Sketch of the senator. 
He resigns from coal and iron business to go into politics, Thomas 
Seddon elected president of Sloss Company. Biographical sketch of 
Mr. Seddon. "The company spent five hundred thousand dollars edu- 
cating me!" How young James W. McQueen stepped into the ranks 
of the Sloss Company. Export trade to foreign countries inaugurated. 
Sol Haas succeeds to presidency. Acquisition of Sheffield properties. 
Affairs of Pioneer Mining and Manufacturing Company. Interest of 
Samuel Thomas. Old Hawkins plantation. Building of first furnace. 
Entrance of F. B. Keiser. Founding of Thomas. Odd geological con- 
struction on pioneer property. John H. Adams appointed superin- 
tendent of mines. Biographical sketch of Mr. Adams. Purchase of 
company's properties by Republic Iron and Steel Company in 1899. 
Rolling mills acquired. W. H. Hassinger elected vice-president and 
district manager. J. H. Adams resigns to captain Sayre Mining and 
Manufacturing Company. W. H. Hassinger enters Southern Steel Com- 
pany. Report of President Thompson, 1901. Present Day Management. 
Entrance of W. A. Green. 

TWO important contemporary events of the days of the 
Great Boom of Birmingham were the formation of 
the Sloss Iron and Steel Company, now the Sloss- 
Sheffield Steel and Iron Company, and the inauguration of con- 
struction work by the Pioneer Mining and Manufacturing Com- 
pany, now a division of the great Republic Iron and Steel 
Company. 

The organization of the Sloss Iron and Steel Company came 
about in this way. Colonel Sloss was nearing his seventieth year 
and the strain of incessant toil began to tell on him. He gave 
an option on the Sloss Furnace Company late in the fall of 1886 
to John W. Johnston, president of the Georgia Pacific Railroad 
Company, and to Joseph Forney Johnston, then president of the 



348 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



Alabama National Bank. Owing to the fact that J. C. Maben 
was connected with the building of the Georgia Pacific Railroad 
as a director, and in much of its financiering, the Messrs. John- 
ston started for New York City to see Mr. Maben and try to 
raise the purchase money to take up the option. Their meeting 
led to immediate results. Although Mr. Maben had not then 
made a personal inspection of the Birmingham District, he was 
fairly at home on the ground ; he was informed as to the general 
conditions and possibilities of the region, and foresaw the vast 
proportions to which coal, iron, and railroad enterprises in Ala- 
bama would reach in time, if properly financed and directed. 
Thus, sighting an opportunity, he at once mustered his forces 
of credit and influence on Wall Street, and, single-handed, went 
about raising the capital required. In one day he raised funds 
to the amount of three millions of dollars. The option on the 
Sloss Furnace Company was straightway taken up ; Colonel Sloss 
retired from active business life. He bought a home on High- 
land Avenue, which is the one now owned by J. H. Woodward, 
president of the Woodward Iron Company. During the few re- 
maining years of his life, Colonel Sloss became actively interested 
in the educational progress of the South, and at the time of his 
death, in May of 1890, he was president of the Lake DeFuniak 
Chatauqua Association. 

James W. Sloss left upon the Birmingham District his mark. 
Every work to which he turned his hand has become permanent, 
examples being the South and North Railroad, now part of the 
Louisville and Nashville system; the Oxmoor furnaces and the 
Pratt Coal mines, now Tennessee Company holdings; and the 
Sloss Ore mines and the Sloss Furnace Company, foundations of 
Sloss-Sheffield Steel and Iron Company. Colonel Sloss' career 
has been followed in these chronicles straight from the time he 
trudged the rough pikes of Limestone County without a penny 
in his pocket (but carrying "Harry Lorrequer," his pet book), 
through a long upward struggle to a place of influence and re- 
gard in the community. His name, retained in that of the Sloss- 
Sheffield Steel and Iron Company, carries with it historic sug- 
gestion and sense of the pioneer days of Alabama. 

In February of 1887, following the purchase of the Sloss Fur- 
nace Company by the New York capitalists, the new company, 
Sloss Iron and Steel, was formed, and Joseph F. Johnston was 
elected president. 



MORE BIG BUSINESS 1886 349 



At this time Mr. Johnston had been in Birmingham but a 
couple of years, having come up from Selma, where he had prac- 
ticed law ever since the Civil War closed, and where he had 
taken more or less of a hand in State politics. Like so many of 
his colleagues in the coal and iron business of Alabama, Mr. 
Johnston had served in the Confederate army. He had risen 
from the ranks to the office of captain, and he was so frequently 
at the front as to be shot down four times. Being just twenty- 
one, however, at the Appomattox business, he got rather more 
comfort than misery out of his battle wounds, and in every biog- 
raphy since recorded of Senator Johnston, no matter of how 
brief a compass, those four Federal bullets have due mention. 
Captain Johnston was not by birth an Alabamian, for he came 
from North Carolina, and was of old Scotch fighting stock. The 
first Johnston on North American soil back in 1745 was one 
Gilbert Johnston of Scotland, who, espousing the cause of the 
Pretender, fought and was wounded at the battle of Culloden. 
Then with the clan of the McDonalds he had fled for refuge to 
North Carolina. Gilbert Johnston's son, named for King James, 
became a colonel in the war of the American Revolution. He 
was the grandfather of Joseph Forney Johnston, who was born 
there at the old colony place in Lincoln County, North Carolina, 
in 1843. He left school to shoulder his musket and fight as his 
fathers had fought. Taking up the study of law in 1865, he was 
admitted to the bar, and left North Carolina for Alabama. In 
1884 he came to Birmingham and, as has been noted, went into 
the banking business. 

When he entered upon his administration of the Sloss Com- 
pany he at once set about building two additional blast furnaces 
at North Birmingham. With the backing of the Virginia and 
New York capitalists, he acquired 15,000 additional acres of 
coal lands. He purchased outright the Coalburg Coal and 
Coke Company, founded by John T. Milner, and further de- 
veloped by Edward M. Tutwiler. Additional coke ovens were also 
built to supply the two new furnaces which were building, and 
additional coal mines were opened to supply the ovens with coal, 
and also to take the place of coal which had been furnished the 
old company for its two city furnaces by the Tennessee Coal and 
Iron Company under a contract which still had two- years to 
run. With 38,000 acres all told in the shape of coal, iron, and 
limestone lands, with an annual output of 65,000 tons of iron, 



350 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



and the capital stock placed at $3,000,000, the Sloss Iron and 
Steel Company was ready for a start. But it was handicapped 
with a heavy mortgage placed for the purpose of extension and 
improvement. 

The furnaces and mining operations ate up every dollar of 
the company's earnings, and looked none the fatter for it. The 
company began to struggle to meet its interest, but soon saw, 
instead of happy prospect of clear mortgage and big dividends, 
the forlorn visage of bankruptcy staring them in the face. Cap- 
tain Johnston had a dream of seven lean kine. Then, too, the 
captain was ever more of a legislator (Southern Democrat) than 
he was a coal and iron man or a financier. Other lights beck- 
oned, and he quit after his first year's service to go into the 
political field. He became chairman of the State Democratic 
committee; then, in 1896, governor of Alabama, and in 1906, 
United States senator from Alabama, succeeding Edmund W. 
Pettus at his death. 

Meanwhile in the year 1888 the Sloss Company was facing a 
crisis. It was on the verge of bankruptcy. Thomas Seddon be- 
came interested at this juncture on the plea of the stockholders 
and directors. Mr. Seddon, representing interests and capital 
both in Richmond and Baltimore, had been in 1886 and 1887 
officially connected with the Richmond and West Point and 
Georgia Pacific railroads, the latter road being the forerunner 
of the Southern system. In the construction of the various 
branch lines of the Georgia Pacific, various properties of the 
Sloss Company had been brought constantly to the survey of 
the railroad men interested, and also to the attention of John C. 
Maben's Wall Street firm. The purchase of the option on this 
property by Mr. Maben in 1886 concerned his business associates 
in every quarter. 

After Joseph F. Johnston's retirement in the year 1888, 
Thomas O. Seddon was called to the presidency of the Sloss 
Company, " by virtue," Richard H. Edmonds declared, " of his 
ability as a business man, at a time when he scarcely knew a 
piece of pig iron from a lump of coal. . . . Seddon brought to 
his task keen financial ability and a determination to save from 
ruin an enterprise in which so many of his friends were largely 
interested. He bore the brunt of the reorganization of the com- 
pany and its recapitalization, and lived to see it on a firm and 
solid basis, with every dollar of investment safe and yielding 



MORE BIG BUSINESS 1886 351 



a large profit to those whose faith in him had called him to so 
difficult a task." 

For eight years Mr. Seddon worked for the Sloss Company as 
its president and manager, and he died in harness. " They never ' 
could afford to turn me off, you know, no matter how much they 
might want to/' he used to say with a twinkle in his eyes. " It 
would 've been too big a loss for 'em to stand. For the company 
spent $500,000 educating me ! No, sir, no danger of my losing 
my job." 

" Tom " Seddon was a Virginian, born and bred on James 
Eiver. His father, a leading figure of the times, was the Secre- 
tary of War of the Confederacy. Young Seddon went to work 
early in the commercial field, starting in the wholesale grocery 
business in Richmond, and later turning to railroad enterprises. 
Short of stature, he was slight and fragile in physique, for he 
had spinal disease to battle against from birth. " There was al- 
ways considerable more quality about Tom Seddon than quan- 
tity," said Colonel Shook. "He was big-hearted, big-brained, 
broad-gauged, and full of humor." 

" He liked a joke," says Truman Aldrich, " a good deal better 
than most men do, and he usually saw more in one. I remember 
an old darkey janitor who used to work around the office, and 
once after a directors' meeting, when he was putting the office 
to rights, he said to Mr. Seddon, ( Dem correctors o' your 'n sho' 
do set long, Marse Tom! Seddon fairly grabbed the epithet 
correctors ! For the rest of his life he never referred to the 
directors of the Sloss Company as other than his 6 correctors.' " 

One day in 1890 Tom Seddon was walking down Twentieth 
Street in Birmingham when he met a young fellow, whose folk 
he knew pretty well, and who had recently come up to Birming- 
ham as train dispatcher for the Alabama Great Southern. 

" James," he said, "what'r ye getting?" 

The young man told him. 

"Well, now," Seddon said, "come along up to the office. 
S'posin' you start in with us?" 

The young man was James William McQueen, later to be- 
come vice-president of the Sloss-Sheffield Company, and one of 
the big guns of the Birmingham District. 

During Seddon's administration (on March 3, 1894) export 
trade of pig iron to foreign countries was inaugurated in Jeffer- 
son County by the Sloss Iron and Steel Company. A consign- 



352 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



ment of 100 tons, or 224,000 pounds, on a through rate of 
$2.25 per ton, was billed from Birmingham to New Orleans 
over the Louisville and Nashville and shipped to Liverpool. 
Sloss foundry iron was also in demand from the various navy 
yards of the United States. An observation by Herbert Casson 
in " The Romance of Steel " is, " Admiral Melville jocularly ex- 
plained the memorable run of the warship Oregon by saying, 
' You know she was built of Sloss iron.' " 

The death of Thomas Seddon took place on May 10, 1896, 
during his term of office as president of the company. Mr. 
Seddon was also serving at the time as president of the Alabama 
Industrial and Scientific Society, of which he was one of the 
original members. He had, in fact, signed the call for the first 
meeting of this society held in December of 1890, and he was one 
of the sincere and active workers of the little group of progres- 
sive and scholarly men banded together in the common interests 
of coal and iron development of the State. Dr. William B. 
Phillips, Erskine Ramsay, and Dr. Eugene A. Smith comprised 
the committee appointed to draw up resolutions at Seddon's 
death, placing in the records of the society a tribute to his work 
in the Birmingham District, and to his co-operation with the well 
directed efforts in behalf of the society. Tom Seddon's brother, 
William C. Seddon, for many years a banker in Baltimore, was 
elected early in 1909 chairman of the executive and finance com- 
mittee of the Alabama Consolidated Coal and Iron Company. 

Upon the death of Thomas Seddon, Sol Haas succeeded to the 
presidency of the Sloss Iron and Steel Company; and it was 
during Mr. Haas' administration in 1899 that the directors of 
the company acquired, through purchase, the two furnaces 
erected by Colonel Ensley at Sheffield; the Lady and Hattie 
Ensley and the " Philadelphia Furnace " at Florence ; 20,000 
acres of brown ore lands in Franklin and Colbert counties ; and 
a large coal mine with its washer, coke ovens, and accessories, at 
Dora on the Frisco Road, originally owned by Walter Moore. 
The furnaces had not been operated for a long time, and nearly 
all of the Sheffield district property thus acquired had been in 
the hands of a receiver for nine or ten years. The Franklin 
County ore lands, situated in the neighborhood of Russellville, 
originally belonged to Andrew Jackson's scout, Major Russell, 
and were near to old " Cedar Creek," the first furnace of Ala- 
bama. Twenty thousand additional acres of coal land in Walker 



MORE BIG BUSINESS 1886 



353 



County were also purchased, and the name of the company was 
changed to that of the Sloss-Sheffield Steel and Iron Company. 
Its record from 1899 to 1909 will be treated in a later chapter. 

The Pioneer Mining and Manufacturing Company was or- 
ganized by members of the famous Thomas family of Pennsyl- 
vania iron-masters, — David, Samuel, and Edwin Thomas, — 
together with Robert H. Sayre and their associates. The first 
seeds were sown directly after the Civil War, when, as has previ- 
ously been chronicled, the initial properties of the company were 
acquired and Baylis Grace and Giles Edwards were employed as 
purchasing agents and prospectors. The acquisition of addi- 
tional mineral lands at the hands of various other parties went 
on gradually for two decades before any material shoot of the 
Pioneer Company in the shape of a furnace stack pushed its 
head above ground. 

Samuel Thomas, whose history is widely known, kept close 
tab on his properties in his frequent visits to Alabama, but did 
not consider that the general conditions of the South warranted 
their development until the boom times of Birmingham in 1887. 
The old Hawkins plantation on which the town of Thomas was 
founded was purchased through Aldrich and DeBardeleben for 
four dollars an acre. Mr. Thomas' company held lands in Bibb, 
Shelby, Tuskaloosa, and St. Clair counties, besides in Jefferson, 
much of which was secured at one dollar per acre. Their brown 
ore properties in Tuskaloosa included the historic Tannehill 
mines and hundreds of acres in and around the old furnace 
ruins. 

John H. Adams, vice-president and general manager of the 
Sayre Mining and Manufacturing Company, writes: 

" The first furnace of the Pioneer Company was built on the 
old Williamson Hawkins plantation, and the town of Thomas 
was laid out with its brick houses, its churches, schools, and 
spring water supply, much after the plan of the town of Hoken- 
dauqua, Pennsylvania. All of Samuel Thomas' long-cherished 
desires were carried out under the management of his son, Edwin 
Thomas, president, vice-president, and general manager. Mines, 
iron ore, and coal for the supply of the company furnaces were 
opened by him. It is interesting to note in this connection that 
one of the brown ore properties selected by Mr. Thomas, a piece 
of property which was looked upon as being of little value, has 
mined from a comparatively few acres and shipped to the fur- 
nace at Thomas over two million tons of iron ore." 

23 



354 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



Associated with Mr. Thomas in the building of this town and 
his iron manufacturing plant was F. B. Keiser, one of the former 
engineers of the Thomas Iron Company at Hokendauqua, Penn- 
sylvania. Mr. Keiser's father, Bernhard Keiser, an early Ger- 
man engineer in this country, a foundryman, machinist, and 
inventor, was, at this time (early in 1887), chief engineer for 
the Thomas Iron Company. F. B. Keiser was born in 1858, at 
Allentown, Pennsylvania. He received his early education in 
the public schools at Hokendauqua, and later took a special 
course in Allentown. 

He was instructed in mechanical and civil engineering by his 
father and subsequently became his assistant. "When he left 
Pennsylvania for the South in February, 1887, he had in charge 
the mechanical and construction departments for twelve blast 
furnaces, machine, car, and boiler shops, foundries, rolling stock, 
and mines belonging to the Thomas Iron Company. He had 
spent some time in the Connellsville region, studying the manu- 
facture of coke and the construction of coke ovens. He made 
the plans for the general layout of the first two furnaces which 
were built at Thomas, Alabama. The company's first furnace 
went in blast May 18, 1888 ; the second, also designed and built 
by Mr. Keiser, was completed in 1890. The third furnace, put 
up after the Republic Iron and Steel Company acquired the 
Pioneer Company, was erected under Keiser's supervision. 

The town of Thomas is located on a tract of one thousand six 
hundred eight acres, four miles from Birmingham, near Pratt 
City. Village Creek runs through the property, supplying the 
furnaces with water and feeding an artificial lake for storage pur- 
poses and for protection against drought. West Red Mountain 
crosses Thomas tract on its northern portion and gives out at 
the little bridge on the old Jasper road. 

" A curious fact is that this vein of ore is just one hundred 
and fifty yards from the Black Creek Coal Seam," says Mr. 
Adams. Certainly a closer contiguity than exists in any other 
portion of the State. Within a few yards of this odd geological 
construction, on the Thomas property, stand to-day two of the 
original plantation cabins built long before the Civil War by old 
Williamson Hawkins. They are still occupied by two of old 
" Marse " Hawkins' former slaves, Aunt Chloe and Uncle Nat. 
"Dese yere misable furnaces, an' de slag piles an' de pig iron 
done ruined my watermillyun patch ! " says Uncle Nat. The 



Llewellyn Johns 
A Pioneer Mining Engineer of 
Birmingham District 



F. B. Keisee 

Vice-President and General Manager of 
Southern Iron and Steel Company 





John Campbell Ma ben 
President of Sloss-Sheffield Steel and Iron 
Company 



John H. Adams 



Vice-President and General Manager of Sayre 
Mining and Manufacturing Company 



MORE BIG BUSINESS 1886 



355 



Thomas tract is reached and cut by all of the trunk lines enter- 
ing Birmingham, as well as by the Birmingham Railway Light 
and Power Company's main line to Ensley, which passes one 
and three-fourths miles through the property. There is imme- 
diately south of and adjacent to the plant a deposit of dolomite 
which supplies the furnaces. 

In 1892 Mr. Thomas appointed as superintendent of his mines 
John H. Adams, who was at that time acting as manager of 
mines for the Morris Mining Company. Mr. Adams, who came 
from Birmingham, England, as a boy, has made his own way up 
in this country. He was born in Birmingham, England, in 
July, 1856. His father was manager of the Hallfield Iron Works 
of Bilston. He attended the Dudley Grammar School of Bir- 
mingham and the Mechanical Institute of Staffordshire. 

There were then in Staffordshire great open-throated furnaces, 
without bells, and the coke was burned in wide coke hearths. By 
these great lights John Adams used to do his lessons at night. 
When he was fourteen years old he set to work in the drawing- 
room and the mills of Caponfield at Priestfield. He had not 
been there many months when the chance came to go to America. 
It seems that John Fritz's rolling mill in Chattanooga had been 
blown up in the war and the remains were bought by General 
John T. Wilder, United States Army, and his associates. Gen- 
eral Wilder went to England for skilled iron workers, and young 
Adams was one of the crew employed, and came over that very 
year (1870). During the ensuing ten years he worked at vari- 
ous plants in Cincinnati and in the Pittsburgh and Bethlehem 
districts of Pennsylvania. The year of his marriage, 1880, was 
also the year of his coming to Birmingham. His wife was a 
Welsh girl, the daughter of George Williams, an iron man, once 
connected with the old Neath Abbey Iron Works in Wales, where 
David Thomas had gotten his first job. 

After working two years in the Birmingham rolling mills 
under Thomas Coleman Ward, John Adams entered the Sloss 
Eurnace Company, and eventually became mine manager of the 
red ore mines of Ruffner, Irondale, and Sloss. At the time of 
the organization of that company's furnaces at North Birming- 
ham, he left to take the position of manager of the Tredegar 
rolling mills at Chattanooga, and became at length general super- 
intendent of the Bessemer rolling mills, and in 1890 became 
mine manager of the Morris Mining Company, where he had 



356 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



charge of the operations at Redding, Alice, and Wade. Two 
years later he entered, at Samuel Thomas' instance, the service 
of the Pioneer Company, with which organization he remained 
until his resignation in 1906. In addition to his office as super- 
intendent of mines, Mr. Adams also acted as general land agent 
for the Pioneer Company. He prospected, selected, and pur- 
chased large additional areas of coal, ore, and limestone proper- 
ties, making , monthly reports to Mr. Thomas. The brown ore 
mines at Goethite, near Tannehill, and at Houston, and the coal 
mines at Sayreton and Republic were opened and developed under 
John Adams' jurisdiction. The Raimund mine was named by 
him for Samuel Thomas' grandson. 

In October of 1899 all of the properties of the Pioneer Com- 
pany were purchased by the Republic Iron and Steel Company. 
This immense corporation, whose main headquarters are at Pitts- 
burg, owned mineral interests in lands, furnaces, rolling mill, 
and steel plants, ore and coal mines in Pennsylvania, Ohio, 
Indiana, Illinois, and Minnesota, and at that time had a capital 
of forty-seven million dollars. Its entrance into the Southern 
field afforded another sensation in the business world. In ad- 
dition to acquiring all the stock of the Pioneer Company, the 
Republic also bought up the old Birmingham rolling mill, the 
first on record in Birmingham, and the Alabama rolling mills at 
Gate City. The latter concern, which had been established in 
the great boom year, about the same time the Pioneer Company 
began construction work, was captained by W. H. Hassinger. 

Mr. Hassinger was now elected by the Republic Company as 
vice-president and district manager. John H. Adams was made 
assistant district manager. Associated with these two officers 
were mining engineer Llewellyn Johns, district treasurer D. M. 
Forker, district auditor P. C. Rickey, superintendent of furnaces 
F. B. Keiser, superintendent of Birmingham rolling mills J. H. 
Pritchard, superintendent of Sayreton mines J. E. Strong, super- 
intendent of Warner mines H. A. Lint, superintendent of ore 
mines R. Moon. Development work now progressed actively, with 
ample backing. No. 3 was put in blast June 11, 1902. 
"This was the first large furnace built in the Birming- 
ham District," says Mr. Keiser. " Up to that time it was thought 
impossible to run a furnace of its size successfully. It proved 
a success, and other furnace men in the district soon followed the 
example." This furnace had a daily capacity of two hundred 



MORE BIG BUSINESS 1886 



357 



fifty tons and was considered the most modernly equipped in the 
South in 1902. 

John H. Adams resigned from the Republic Company in 1906 
to become vice-president and general manager of the Sayre Min- 
ing and Manufacturing Company. It seems that Robert H. 
Sayre, so long associated with Samuel Thomas in the purchase 
of mineral properties in Alabama, and acting as one of the direc- 
tors in the Pioneer Company, withdrew his connection with the 
company when its holdings were sold to the Republic Iron and 
Steel Company, but kept his own property. He began buying 
more coal lands and organized the Sayre Mining and Manufac- 
turing Company in connection with Samuel Thomas. This com- 
pany began operations at Sayre, Alabama, July, 1903, and John 
H. Adams was connected with it at the time of its formation, 
with the consent of the Republic officials. When its operations 
called for steadier application he resigned his office to captain 
the Sayre concern. Upon the death of Robert H. Sayre, in 1907, 
A. N. Cleaver became president, while Mr. Adams remains as 
vice-president and manager, and James Weisel as secretary and 
treasurer. W. H. Hassinger also resigned from the Republic 
Company to officer his own concerns in 1907. In 1909 he was 
elected president of the reorganized Southern Iron and Steel 
Company. 

Of the older officers of the Pioneer Company remaining with 
the new concern until 1909 was F. B. Keiser, general superin- 
tendent of Thomas division. Many improvements and labor- 
saving devices and inventions of his own, as well as those of 
others, were introduced by Mr. Keiser, among them an oil-saving 
machine, also the ore gates, which are used for delivering ore 
from the bins into the cars. 

These were first used at No. 3 furnace, and then at No. 1 and 
No. 2, and have proven such a success that others in the South 
as well as in the North have adopted them because of the saving 
in labor. Mr. Keiser had entire charge in an official way of the 
town of Thomas, acting practically as mayor and public school 
superintendent, as well as continuing his daily work at the 
plant. 

Subsequent events relating to the Republic Company when 
John W. Gates and associates acquired controlling interest and 
John A. Topping entered the Southern field will be detailed 
later. Enough to say here that the old Pioneer Company came 



358 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



to hold a place in the front rank, along with the five present-day 
leaders: the Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company; 
Pratt Consolidated Coal Company; Sloss-Sheffield Steel and 
Iron Company; Woodward Iron Company; and Alabama Con- 
solidated Coal and Iron Company. 

The combined capacity of the three furnaces shortly after the 
Republic Company acquired the property totaled six hundred fifty 
tons per day. The coal properties at Warner and Sayreton were 
developed and an immense battery of coke ovens, said to be the 
largest single battery in the United States (nine hundred bee- 
hive ovens), was completed. 

The president of the Republic Company, then Alexis W. 
Thompson, announced in December, 1901, its pig iron capacity 
altogether, North and South, as 600,000 tons per annum. He 
figured the raw materials in the ground as 50,000,000 tons coking 
coal, 50,000,000 tons red ore, and 20,000,000 tons brown ore. Of 
the company's possessions in Alabama he said: 

" In Alabama the company owns seventy million tons of ore 
and fifty million tons of coal, mostly in fee simple, together with 
ample quantities of limestone, all within switching distance of 
three blast furnaces at Thomas, Alabama, which have a daily 
capacity of six hundred and fifty tons of basic, foundry, and 
forge pig iron. This ore, coke, and limestone will cover the re- 
quirements of double the present capacity for more than fifty 
years. The company produces all of its coke, ore, and limestone 
requirements in this district, and, with three modern blast fur- 
naces, one entirely new, the others completely remodeled since 
they were required by the company, pig iron in this district will 
be continuously produced at the lowest possible cost. 

" It may interest our stockholders to know that during the year 
1901 the State of Alabama produced more pig iron than any other 
State of the Union, excepting only three, viz. : Pennsylvania, 
Ohio, and Illinois, and only two hundred and seventy-five thou- 
sand tons less than Illinois, these four States having an output 
of more than eighty per cent of the total production in the 
United States. The development of the pig iron production in 
the State of Alabama has been very rapid and is a very important 
factor in the iron and steel business of the United States." 

During the present-day period the Republic Iron and Steel 
Company is officered by John A. Topping , chairman ; Tracy W. 
Guthrie, president; Thomas J. Bray, vice-president; Severn P. 
Ker, vice-president; Harry L. Rownd, secretary and treasurer; 
Simpson, Thatcher, and Bartlett, general counsel. The executive 



MORE BIG BUSINESS 1886 



359 



committee comprises John A. Topping, Grant B. Schley, John W. 
Gates, Leonard C. Hanna, Earl W. Oglebay. Each of the officers 
of this committee is also a director in the company. Other direc- 
tors are Tracy W. Guthrie, Harry S. Black, J. B. Duke, G. Wat- 
son French, Harry L. Eownd, Edward J. Berwind, and Samuel 
G. Cooper. 

The officer acting in immediate charge of affairs in Birming- 
ham is William A. Green, treasurer and auditor of the Southern 
district. Mr. Green has had practically twenty-five years of 
experience in the financing and accounting end of the iron 
and steel business. A Virginian by birth, he began his career 
early in the eighteen-eighties in New York City, on Wall Street. 
In 1884 he located in Chicago and took a clerical position with 
the Joliet Steel Company. Upon the consolidation of all of the 
Chicago Steel interests with the Illinois Steel Company, five 
years later, Mr. Green was made division auditor of that com- 
pany, and successively auditor of costs, assistant secretary, and 
secretary. In 1899 he was elected treasurer of the American Steel 
and Wire Company. Serving thus on the staff of John W. Gates, 
Mr. Green was intimately associated for years with that enter- 
prising and successful captain of industry. When the syndicate, 
so frequently referred to as "the Gates Syndicate," acquired 
majority stock of the Tennessee and Republic companies, he was 
elected secretary and treasurer of the Tennessee Coal, Iron, and 
Railroad Company, and treasurer of the Southern district of the 
Republic Company, which last position he retained, resigning 
the former when the United States Steel acquired the Tennessee 
Company. 



CHAPTER XXIII 

ADVENT OF TENNESSEE COMPANY INTO ALABAMA (1886) 
AND ITS EARLY TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS 

How it all came about. Feuds behind the scenes. Tennesseean versus 
Tennesseean. Pratt Coal and Iron Company conveyed to Tennessee 
Company. Resume of early history of celebrated company. Its origin 
in Cumberland Mountains. Discovery of coal on plateau. Role played 
by Lawyer Bilbo of Nashville. New York capitalists invest in property. 
Sewanee Mining Company incorporated. Construction of railroad "up 
to the clouds." First coal shipped 1856. Thousands of acres of moun- 
tain land donated to University of South by Tennessee Company. New 
charter obtained 1860 and name changed to Tennessee Coal and Railroad 
Company. Act of incorporation. Amendments to charter. Hard 
times ahead. War breaks out. Operations during Civil War. Legal 
tangles of company begin. Arthur St. Clair Colyar takes hold of the 
business. Young Alfred M. Shook gets his first job. How the company 
was floated on air. Services of A. T. Duncan and J. C. Warner enlisted. 
Reorganization takes place. Business men of Nashville step into the 
field. Colonel Shook's gallant rescue of Kate. Struggles of early days. 
Contract to work convicts made with State of Tennessee. More trouble. 
Colonel Colyar predicts great days ahead. Messrs. Shook and Warner 
learn how to build coke ovens and blast furnaces. Construction of the 
Fiery Gizzard. Visit of James Bowron, Sr., to the Tennessee Mountains. 
Start of Southern States Coal, Iron, and Land Company, Ltd. Descrip- 
tion of Sequatchie valley. Control of Tennessee Company passes into 
new hands. Sketch of William Morrow. Organization of Sewanee 
Furnace Company. Young George B. McCormack enters service of 
company. Summary of operations in early eighteen-eighties. Associa- 
tion of Thomas O'Connor and William H. Cherry with company. John 
H. Inman acquires T. C. I. stock. Enoch Ensley is left out of big deal 
and gets coal mine in Alabama. Nat Baxter, Jr., of Nashville appointed 
to official position. Trade with Southern States Coal, Iron, and Land 
Company effected. Interesting record of the Bowron family. Thomas 
Whitwell's connection. John Bull in the Southern iron business. Grad- 
ual progress of consolidated company. Tennessee Company begins to 
attract attention of New York Stock Exchange. Wall Street game 
commencers. Influence of George B. McCormack. The march to 
Alabama. 

THE coming of the Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad 
Company into the Birmingham District in 1886 is per- 
haps the most significant event in Southern coal and 
iron records of this interesting year. The company's leap from 
the Cumberland Mountains into the Alabama field had origin 
in certain differences in matters of policy that occurred between 
Enoch Ensley and T. T. Hillman, and also between A. M. Shook 
and W. M. Duncan. 



Former Captains of the T. C. I. 




Colonel Alfred Montgomery Shook 
T. T. Hillman James Bowron, Jr. 



ADVENT OF TENNESSEE COMPANY 1886 361 



In the first place, Colonel Ensley and his Memphis associates 
having, in 1884, consolidated the various properties of the Pratt 
Coal and Coke Company, the Alice Furnace Company, and the 
Linn Iron Works, and thus formed the Pratt Coal and Iron 
Company, they held, as a matter of course, majority control, while 
Mr. Hillman, formerly the largest stockholder of the Alice Fur- 
nace Company, found that he was being gradually subordinated 
and had no voice whatsoever in the control or operation of his 
own blast furnaces. 

Now T. T. Hillman, having in him the blood of more than 
seven generations of Dutch iron workers, was not one to stand by 
and see himself ousted by " a Tennessee horse trader/' as some of 
Ensley's enemies termed him. And, for instance, when Alice 
broke the record and turned out one hundred and fifty tons of 
pig iron, the largest daily run of any single blast furnace in the 
entire South, in 1886, the way Enoch Ensley took on the glory 
of it was enough to stir black blood. So Hillman brooded and 
figured; he saw himself in a cul-de-sac, and saw that to relieve 
the situation he must either back out or else get behind the 
Ensley crowd and buy up the majority stock of the Pratt Coal 
and Iron Company. But he had not sufficient funds for the 
latter move. 

He knew, however, a man up in Nashville who, just about 
that time, was having troubles akin to his. This man was 
Colonel Shook, formerly general manager of the Tennessee Coal, 
Iron, and Eailroad Company. He had been frozen out of office 
by the action of W. M. Duncan. Mr. Duncan, it seems, had ac- 
quired, in Wall Street, majority control of his neighbors' mining 
company, and had borne down on them relentlessly. Colonel 
Shook, with Mr. Baxter as his side partner, joined forces and 
mapped out a line of action to recover the lost ground. Their 
plan, consummated after more than a year's diplomacy, was, in 
brief, simply to enlist J ohn H. Inman's capital to take up options 
on the Pratt Coal and Iron Company, which had been secured 
from Colonel Ensley. These options, amounting to $2,250,000, 
at seventy cents on the dollar, were then offered through Inman's 
agency to the Tennessee Company. 

It was a beautiful plan, and it worked. The officers of the 
Tennessee Company entered into negotiations in 1886. Colonel 
Ensley at first approach burst out laughing. " So the tail would 
wag the dog, eh?" he said, and he laughed a good deal. But 



362 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



when he discerned the true status of affairs he turned mad as 
a bull. It was of no use, however; the trade was on in full 
swing. The very name of the Pratt Coal and Iron Company 
was submerged in the transaction. The Tennessee Coal, Iron, 
and Railroad Company had the lead in that it was the older 
established corporation and its securities having been listed on 
the New York Stock Exchange for years would, it was reason- 
ably urged, color the new securities with a market value they 
would not otherwise possess. Thus, the Pratt Coal and Iron 
Company with all its properties was conveyed to the Tennessee 
Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company in the year 1886; and Hill- 
man became square with Ensley, and Shook was reinstated. 

The Tennessee Company, while new on Alabama ground, 
had cut quite a figure up in Tennessee. The singular and dra- 
matic events of its early makings, no less than those now des- 
tined to circle about its course in Alabama, under the auspices 
of the United States Steel Corporation, give to it life and color 
altogether apart from ordinary coal and iron company records. 
They are worth pausing over, therefore, and giving a long back- 
ward glance, by which to see events the plainer, as the company 
sets to work building on Enoch Ensley's hope. The Tennessee 
Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company had source in the mountains 
of Tennessee, high up on the tiptop of that spur of the Cumber- 
land Plateau which is two thousand feet above sea level, and 
which is still called by its Cherokee name, Sewanee (Big 
Mountain). The domain of the University of the South, forest 
and cove, valley view, rock, ravine, and waterfall, runs wild 
to-day within gunshot of the Old Coal Bank, or Little Mountain 
Cove, where the first meager drift was opened up by the Sewanee 
Mining Company, parent stock of the Tennessee Company, 
early in the eighteen-fifties. 

The founding of the university itself on that superb and mili- 
tant site, fortified by sandstone escarpments, was the direct re- 
sult of the old mining company's gift of land and of its little 
will-o'-the-wisp of a railroad, which, locking lights with the 
Nashville, Chattanooga, and St. Louis Railroad at the mountain's 
base, pointed out the ascendancy of the big rock and the possi- 
bility of other uses out of it, beyond the digging of coal. 

All that southern portion of the Tennessee country was, 
up to the middle of the nineteenth century, practically undis- 
covered ground, known only to the hunters and trappers and the 



ADVENT OF TENNESSEE COMPANY 1886 363 



hill-folk born and bred in the mountain cornfields. It was shut, 
as in a vise, from civilization. Talk of cutting it with a rail- 
road from Nashville to Chattanooga, and, at length, the rail- 
road itself, incited exploration. A young Irishman, named 
Leslie Kennedy, started out to climb the plateau and see what 
he could find. He tramped poor, naked soil mile on mile where 
scrubby little chestnut trees drew bitter sustenance, and many a 
dying oak bowed to the sharp-edged winds. High up in the 
ridges he plodded and searched, when, all of a sudden, he struck 
coal. Straight back to Nashville he turned with pockets bulging. 
Fair news he held it; in fact, discovery! 

No one in Nashville, however, got excited. No one took any 
stock in the young Irish stranger, his coal talk, or even in his 
good specimens of coal. Mountain land was mountain land, 
people thought, and there was an end to it. Kennedy could get 
no hearing anywhere until he met William N. Bilbo, Esq., of 
the law firm of Bell and Bilbo. (This Bell was the great John 
Bell whom the Tennesseeans count their best man next to 
Andrew Jackson, and record of whose career masses up so big in 
United States political life.) Mr. Bilbo became interested in the 
young Irishman's coal business at once. 

W. N. Bilbo was an odd genius and crammed with idiosyn- 
crasies. He wore ultra-elaborate waistcoats and long Burnside 
whiskers; had extraordinarily elegant manners, and altogether 
quite led the fashions of ante-bellum Nashville. He was, in- 
deed, a fair Beau Brummel, with a profession added; and a 
great figure of the bench and bar of old Nashville. He was an 
odd figure, surely, to take hold of shaggy mountain land. But 
off he went into the wilds with the young Irish enthusiast, and 
the town laughed in its sleeves. Bilbo then saw the coal with 
his own eyes; he saw that coal was the very bedrock of the 
whole plateau. Together the two prospected. Across in Grundy 
County they ran upon old Benjamin Wooten, one of the " char- 
acters " of that region, who was digging coal himself, and actu- 
ally making money out of it. He hauled it down the wagon 
roads and sold it to the blacksmiths in all the little valley towns 
around for miles. His boys had found the coal first, he said, 
while out fox hunting. " The fox run in under the stump of a 
blown down poplar tree," he said ; " the boys started diggin' an' 
struck up on them black stones, an' brought them to me." He 
knew coal! s' help him, he hoped, when he saw it, and he 



364 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



thereupon got a grant of three hundred acres of the land around 
that old poplar root, and had worked it ever since. 1 

He was quite willing to part with it, however, for a considera- 
tion. Mr. Bilbo .acquired not only the Wooten lands, but all 
others on the plateau that he could get by option, straight pur- 
chase, or by gift; for some of it the owners were glad to give 
away to save paying taxes. This was in the latter part of 1851. 

" The lands at this time had, in fact, absolutely no value," 
Colonel A. M. Shook stated in a brief address concerning the 
work and origin of the Tennessee Company, delivered at Sewanee 
in 1887, before the Tennessee Historical Society. " Men would 
not buy them even at twelve and one half cents per acre, and 
pay taxes on them. It was therefore easy for Bilbo to obtain 
large tracts of these lands at very low prices, acquiring some by 
gift, others by purchase." 

It was not long before Bilbo's new doings were known in 
Nashville and people said they "had always thought that fool 
lawyer man was daffy, but now they knew it." Everywhere all 
over town he was laughed at, — he and his mountain land 
purchase. So John Bell's side partner hastened to New York 
and came back shortly, with what some local wag called his 
New York " catch." That is to say, Samuel F. Tracy, Colonel 
Bachus, John Cryder, Boorman Johnson, capitalists, and Major 
A. E. Barney, civil engineer. Upon inspection of the properties, 
they straightway invested. Bilbo closed his trade, and came 
out fifty thousand dollars to the good, — spot cash. " And," 
said Mr. Baxter, who relates the incident, "that trade was the 
talk of the town." It was declared at once that old Bilbo had a 
wise head on his shoulders, and was a good deal smarter, after 
all, than folk thought him. Old Bilbo was "just all right," 
they said. 

Mr. Bilbo then built himself a house in Nashville that suited 
his desire, — a house as ornate as his precious waistcoats, as im- 
pressive as his Burnsides. And here he dwelt in contentment 
for the rest of his days, confining himself solely to the law from 
that time forth — for what had happened once might never happen 
twice, and he stopped, as events subsequently proved, at the right 
moment. 

1 Old Ben Wooten was the second man in Tennessee to dig coal and sell 
it even though on so minute a scale. The first man was Henry W. Wiley, 
and he mined (or rather quarried) his coal on the Indian fork of Poplar 
Creek, near Oliver's postoffice, and loaded it on long narrow barges and 
eteered them down the Tennessee River to Huntsville, — a perilous way. 



ADVENT OF TENNESSEE COMPANY 1886 365 



Meanwhile, Mr. Tracy and the other New Yorkers lost no 
time in organizing themselves into a Tennessee Company and 
getting out a charter. " It is supposed," said Colonel Shook, 
" that Leslie Kennedy first applied the name of Sewanee to the 
coal he had discovered, calling it all the Sewanee vein." At any 
rate, this name was given the coal, and was adopted by the New 
York men, who called their organization the Sewanee Mining 
Company. The charter was given in 1852 by the Tennessee 
Legislature. The caption of the act incorporating this company 
was " An Act to incorporate the Southern Baptist University of 
Memphis, Tennessee." When the bill was on its final reading, 
an amendment was offered incorporating the Sewanee Mining 
Company, located in Franklin, Marion, and Grundy counties, 
Tennessee, with powers to build and operate a railroad from 
Cowan, Tennessee, to the coal fields in Grundy and Marion 
counties, and to mine and sell coal. 

The first move of the officers then was to build their transpor- 
tation line and connect their coal field with the Cowan junction 
of the Nashville, Chattanooga, and St. Louis, which was then 
just completed. Major Barney set to work locating the line. 
He was at once taken by the neighboring folk for an escaped 
lunatic. Imagine, they said, locating a railroad straight up to 
the clouds. " No locomotive on God's earth could ever pull 
itself up that mountain," they said. The contractors following 
the major were looked on as birds of his feather. The whole 
project was ridiculed from start to finish. It was early in 1853 
that the contracts were let and the work begun. 

This little railroad is known to-day as the Tracy City branch 
of the Nashville, Chattanooga, and St. Louis. It is a twenty- 
seven mile line from Cowan to Coalmont. It runs due east a 
mile or so, alongside the main line; just at the tunnel's mouth 
it describes a quick half circle and takes a leap to the woods; 
it winds then, coil on coil, like a huge scorpion, up the steep 
plateau, under the broad-leaved, red maples, over the oak flats, 
up to the hickory slope, through locust, kalmia, sweet gum, and 
flowering dogwood, by the groves of Sewanee, on to Monteagle, 
and passing Tracy City, at length reaches Coalmont. It crawls 
over the very top of the coal seams. There are three thousand 
square miles of coal up there on the plateau, all told, — five 
thousand tons to the acre. 

The little railroad takes a straight rise of twelve hundred 



366 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



feet, and has in places twenty-four degrees curvature. From 
Cowan to the top of the plateau it is a ten-mile stretch with 
only one tangent of six hundred feet upon the entire line, while 
the average grade is one hundred and twenty feet to the mile. 
This mountain railroad made a sensation. It was distinctly an 
engineering feat and a big event in railroad construction in the 
United States in the early eighteen-fifties. Certain it is, it took 
a fair degree of skill, hard labor, and dollars and cents to put 
it through. It was the only railroad built in Tennessee prior to 
1870 without State aid. 

Cowan Junction itself, named for one of Andrew Jackson's 
1812 officers, is a smoke spot in the hollow. Cinder walks 
crumble about a dingy frame depot. A few stores, " hotels," and 
a little group of houses make up " the city," a stop-off point be- 
tween Nashville and Chattanooga. 

By the year 1855 the road was completed up to the Sewanee 
vein. This was opened by the young Irish prospector, Leslie 
Kennedy, who entered the employ of the new company. The 
first coal was shipped from this vein in 1856. Kennedy became 
mine boss and was called " Cap'n." He got him a wife and one 
hundred acres of farm land on the mountains, atop of the coal 
seam, and he stayed with the works till he died. Although the 
coal of the Sewanee mine was fair enough in grade, the seam 
was thin, and the area covered at that point comparatively small 
for the extensive operations in view by President Tracy and his 
associates. 

The value of " Old Man Wooten's fox hole " was by this 
time appreciated by the company, and they decided to open it 
up. They extended the track ten miles further to this point 
and opened up No. 1 entry of the group known as Wooten Bank, 
which, together with Nos. 2 and 3, Lone Rock and East Fork, 
are being operated at the present time by the Pratt Consolidated 
Coal Company. 1 

Some log shacks, a pine board commissary, and a corrall were 
raised, and the camp was named Tracy City. Two mine loco- 
motives, one called the " Samuel F. Tracy," and the other after 
a French general, were then purchased with a few coal cars, flats, 
and mine cars, and on the eighth day of November, 1858, the 
first carload of coal was sent out from Tracy City. 

1 This Pratt Consolidated Coal Company is not to be confused with the 
old Pratt Coal and Iron Company, but is a distinctly modern organization. 



ADVENT OF TENNESSEE COMPANY 1886 367 



What coal supply then fed Nashville was shipped by boat 
from Pittsburg, floated down the Ohio, and steered up the 
Cumberland. The new Sewanee coal put Pittsburg out of the 
market in short order. That was not, however, saying much, 
for the sales did not come anywhere near paying costs. " All of 
the railroads burnt wood up until the seventies," Colonel Shook 
says, " and only millionaires could afford to buy coal." Up to 
the time the rails were laid down at Tracy City the operations 
of the Sewanee Mining Company had cost six years of hard 
labor and one million six hundred and seventy thousand dollars, 
with not one cent in returns. 

Coincident with the initial operations of the Sewanee Mining 
Company in 1857 the project of the University of the South was 
set on foot. The idea was forged on Lookout Mountain at a 
convention of the bishops and the clerical and lay representatives 
of the Episcopal Church from nine of the Southern States in- 
cluding North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Ala- 
bama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Tennessee. 

The Sewanee Mining Company gave the domain of nearly ten 
thousand acres on condition that the college be opened within 
ten years. Committees set to work; they secured the land, the 
charter, and an endowment fund of three million dollars. The 
cornerstone of the main building was laid on a spring day in 
1860, and the enterprise was sped on by an assemblage of men 
and women five thousand strong. 1 

By this year of 1860 the way ahead for the little mining com- 
pany was indeed precarious. There were some members of the 
company who scarcely knew a bed of coal from a sandstone es- 

1 Colonel Shook said concerning it: "That cornerstone was a beautiful 
block of Tennessee marble, the land we on the mountain call Beefsteak 
Marble, altogether about six feet square. People came from all over the 
county that day, thousands of them. Major Barney's railroad did a 
heavy business. There were no buildings, but dozens of little arbors put 
up all over the grounds, stocked with good things to eat. The speakers 
were Yancey of Alabama and Rhett of South Carolina, and I remember 
there were, at least, two hundred bishops and ministers of the Episcopal 
Church all in their surplices and gowns. It was a great sight." 

By the close of the war nothing was left of any of the buildings started 
at this time. All that the University of the South owned was its charter 
and its wide domain, and it was confronted with the fear of losing even 
the naked soil. In order to keep alive the contract with the Sewanee 
Mining Company, Colonel Shook says, Major George R. Fairbanks, of Fer- 
nandina, Florida, opened school in a log cabin with three mountian boys 
enrolled in the summer of '68, "and the gift of the land," says Colonel 
Shook, "was saved in the nick of time. This cabin became known as 
Rebel's Rest." 



368 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



carpment, and nothing whatsoever about getting the stuff out 
of the ground, and there was no labor to get it. The officers 
were all " city folks," — executives. They could handle the office 
end, but they soon found they must " get them a mining end to 
make the office go." President Tracy finally succeeded in in- 
teresting a fresh group of business men in the company, promi- 
nent among them being Return Jonathan Meigs. It was decided 
to change the name of the company from Sewanee Mining Com- 
pany to that of the Tennessee Coal and Railroad Company, as 
more specific and identified with State interests. The new con- 
cern was incorporated March 24, 1860, the day on which the 
following act was issued by the legislature of Tennessee. 

"To Incorporate the Tennessee Coal and Railroad Com- 
pany, etc. 

Section 1. Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the state 
of Tennessee, That Return J. Meigs, Andrew Ewing, William T. 
Berry, Edwin H. Ewing, David T. Love, John Reid and their as- 
sociates and successors and assigns be and are hereby constituted 
a body politic and corporate, by the name of the i Tennessee Coal 
and Railroad Company/ for the purposes of exploring for copper, 
lead, iron, coal and other ores, metals and minerals, and for min- 
ing, working, smelting and vending the same, and for such pur- 
poses may purchase, construct or erect all necessary buildings and 
other apparatus and fixtures for carrying on their operations, a 
railroad or roads, with one or more tracks, to be run with steam, 
animal or other power, from any point or points on the Nash- 
ville and Chattanooga Railroad to any mineral lands on the Cum- 
berland Mountains and to such other places as the stockholders 
of said company may deem best and expedient for the interest of 
said company; may have a common seal, and the same alter or 
renew at pleasure; enjoy all the privileges incident to corpora- 
tions, purchase, have and hold in fee simple or for a term of 
years any real or personal estate, and may mortgage, transfer 
and convey the same, and by that name may sue and be sued, 
plead and be impleaded, appear, prosecute and defend in any 
court of law or equity in all suits and actions. 

Section 2. That if the owner or owners of any lands or of 
any materials necessary for the construction or repairs of said 
roads will not agree with the board of directors of said company 
or their agent for the sale or the use of the same, application may 
be made by said board of directors or their agent to any justice of 
the peace in the county where said property is situated, who shall 
thereupon issue his writ to the sheriff of said county for the sum- 
moning of a jury of five freeholders, not related to any of the 
parties or in any way interested, who, after being sworn by the 



ADVENT OF TENNESSEE COMPANY 1886 369 



sheriff, shall make a just estimate of the value of the property 
required by said company, and the amount so fixed shall be paid 
by said company to the owners of said property in full settlement 
of all values and damages. 

Section 3. Said company, when necessary, shall have the right 
to conduct the said railroad or roads across or along any public 
road or water course. 

Section 4. The first meeting of said corporation may be called 
by the persons named in this act, or by a majority of them, at 
such time and place as they may select, and at such meeting a 
board of directors shall be chosen from among the subscribers to 
the stock by the votes of a majority of the subscribers present at 
such meeting, and such board of directors shall take charge of 
the operations of the company, subject to such rules and regula- 
tions as may be adopted by the stockholders. The said directors 
shall hold office for one year or until their successors are ap- 
pointed, and may adopt such by-laws and regulations for the 
government of the concerns of the company as they may deem 
expedient not inconsistent with the rules made by the stock- 
holders as aforesaid nor with the constitution and laws of the 
United States and of this State. 

Section 5. That the directors shall cause a book to be kept 
containing the names of all persons who are stockholders of said 
company, showing their places of residence and the number of 
shares of stock held by each respectively, and the time when they 
became respectively the owners of said shares, which book shall, 
during the usual business of each secular day, be open at the 
place of business or domicile of said company for the inspection 
to the stockholders and creditors of the company and their 
representatives. 

Section 6. That the said corporation may divide their capital 
stock into such number of shares and provide for the sale and 
transfer thereof in such manner and form as they may deem ex- 
pedient, levy and collect assessments, forfeit and sell delinquent 
shares, declare and pay dividends in such manner as their by-laws 
may direct. 

Section 7. That the said corporation shall not contract debts 
until the sum of twenty thousand dollars of the capital stock is 
paid in, no part of which shall be withdrawn or in any manner 
diverted from the business of the company, and shall not con- 
tract debts at any time to any amount exceeding the capital stock 
of said company. 

Section 8. (This section irrelevant to this company.) 

Section 9. That this act shall take effect immediately. 

Passed March 24, 1860. 

W. C. Whitthorne, 
Speaker of the House of Representatives. 
Taz. W. Newman - , 

Speaker of the Senate. 

24 



370 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



Although this act is frequently referred to as "the original 
charter of the Tennessee Company," it was the second charter. 
The first one was given, as has been recorded, in 1852, when the 
Sewanee Mining Company was organized. Several amendments 
to the 1860 charter were eventually added. 1 

The reorganized company, to be known no longer as the 
Sewanee Mining Company but as the Tennessee Company, now 
got its second wind, so to speak, and set to work with renewed 
energy. They were jubilant over the success of their railroad 
and their first triumphs in the Nashville market, but hot weather 
soon came and the joy was short-lived. Their coal found no 
market. Beyond the little consumed by Nashville no other town 
wanted it. Looking ahead, the officers saw a sea of troubles. 
They could not sell enough to pay their legal debts. Merchants 
and contractors, at length, in the following year felt themselves 
justified in entering suit; the courts reached out their helping 
hands. Just then the cannon boomed over the hills at Sumter 
by the seacoast, and the mining operations of the hard-pressed 
little company were blasted where they lay. 



During the war Sewanee became trampling ground for the 
contending armies. First there were the Confederate forces, 
Forrest's men, cavalry, and artillery. Camp was pitched at 
Tracy City, and the mines and railroad were pressed into ser- 

1 On the 13th of September, 1881, the year in which iron making was 
inaugurated by the company, the charter was changed and amended, and 
the name of the company was thereby changed to Tennessee Coal, Iron, 
and Railroad Company. On the 16th of July, 1889, the last sentence of 
section 4 of the charter was changed and amended to read as follows: 
"The directors of this company shall hold their offices for the period of 
two years from the date of their election and until their successors are 
elected and qualified. That the next general meeting of the stockholders 
of this company, when a new board of directors shall be elected, shall be 
held on the first Tuesday in April, 1891, and biennially thereafter there 
shall he held a stockholder's meeting, when a board of directors shall 
again be elected, and each two years thereafter a general meeting of the 
stockholders shall be held for the purpose of electing a board of directors." 

On the 10th of May, 1892, the charter was changed and amended by 
adding the following section : " The capital stock of this company shall be 
eighteen million dollars, of which one million shall be preferred stock 
drawing dividends at the rate of eight per cent per annum, cumulative, 
and the remaining seventeen millions shall be common stock, shares to be 
one hundred dollars each." 

On the 12th of September, 1892, the section of the charter added thereto 
on the 10th of May, 1892, was so changed and amended as to read as fol- 
lows: "The capital stock of the company shall be twenty-one million 
dollars, of which one million shall be preferred stock drawing dividends at 
the rate of eight per cent per annum, cumulative, and the remaining twenty 
millions shall be common stock, shares to be one hundred dollars each." 



ADVENT OF TENNESSEE COMPANY 1886 371 



vice. Over in Sequatchie Valley, near the Ally farm creek, a 
skirmish took place. Nat Baxter, Jr., from Freman's Battery, 
hitched up his guns, hauled his howitzers down the rocky heights, 
let loose on the Yankees, and gave and took. The Federal forces 
then held the mountain on the fall of Donelson; they shivered 
the marble cornerstone of the University of the South to splinters 
and blew up every vestige of the young college. 

They then mounted their guns at Tracy City. One Yankee 
who came into the country with General Eosecrans, Frank 
Howard by name, operated the camp, and had the works under 
lease at the war's close. Club-footed mining methods were de- 
stroying all future values, and the mines so robbed as to render 
the whole place perilous. Shadows of camp, of track, of mine, 
and only a little ghost of a company quivered there on the moun- 
tain crest, when Arthur St. Clair 'Colyar, who became the com- 
pany^ first big reorganizer, was induced by the Tennessee cred- 
itors to take the thing in hand. 

Colonel Colyar was the son of a trapper. He was born in the 
woods near Jonesboro, Tennessee, in 1818; his only legacy was 
a few steel traps with some coon skins. When he came of age he 
had learned how to read and write, and soon became a teacher 
in a mountain school. He read law at night, and began to write 
for the Nashville papers. He was tall, long-armed, lean and 
bony, and full of grit. He moved into Winchester and began to 
practice law, and in the sixties was elected member of Congress 
to the Confederacy, though a Union man every inch of him. His 
career as one of the men of public affairs of Tennessee has ex- 
traordinary points. He was editor of the Nashville American, 
and the founder of the Nashville Union, author of the " Life of 
Andrew Jackson/' and the first American to write of the South 
as an iron-making center. 

He established precedents, made great innovations, and once, 
indeed, he put the whole of Nashville in the hands of a receiver. 
But that story belongs in the archives of Nashville town. Major 
E. C. Lewis once heard Colyar make a speech of such power that 
the speech and the man have been inseparable in his mind ever 
since. "It was in defence of Andrew Johnson," said Major 
Lewis, and he tells the occasion of it thus : 

" Andrew Johnson had been provisional governor of Tennes- 
see, vice-president, president of the United States, and was back 
in Tennessee as candidate for the United States Senate. Isham 



372 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



G. Harris was opposing him, and playing upon the prejudices of 
the people, who at that time were hot against anything Federal, 
by denouncing the actions of J ohnson here in Nashville, when he 
made the banks give him fifty thousand dollars. Harris said he 
robbed the banks, and for that act alone Johnson should be 
damned forever. Everybody was afraid of Harris. Colyar was 
not. Colyar did n't care anything about Andy Johnson, but he 
knew that Harris' ascendancy meant no good for Tennessee. 
So he opposed him. He followed Harris in a speech. He said the 
facts were that Andrew Johnson found forty thousand people 
here in Nashville without food and without fire. He went to the 
banks and said, 'We must take care of these people; you give 
me your money, which is useless to you under present conditions.' 
They gave him the money on his guarantee that he would see 
that the Government paid it back, and to show his faith he in- 
dorsed the notes to the several banks for the amount. The entire 
debt had been paid at the time Harris denounced Johnson. 
Colonel Colyar said Harris had left Tennessee with a million 
dollars in gold of school money and run off at the first fire, and 
kept that money the whole four years of the war, paid himself 
and his staff their regular salaries, though never within the State, 
and never doing any service to the State, then ran off to Mexico, 
and now had come back to denounce Andrew Johnson for bor- 
rowing fifty thousand dollars with which to feed the starving 
people at Nashville. ' If,' said Colonel Colyar, ' Johnson should 
be damned eternally' for this fifty thousand dollars, don't you 
think, fellow-citizens, Harris should go to hell for at least a 
thousand years ? ' " 

There is no kind of argument that takes in Tennessee like 
this kind, and Colonel Colyar was a made man from that day 
forth. 

Meanwhile, in the early spring of 1866, the Tennessee Coal 
and Railroad Company was sold under a decree of the Supreme 
Court of Tennessee, bills having been filed in the State court by 
the Tennessee creditors, and the whole property was bid in by 
the latter for their debt. About the same time the New York 
creditors filed bills in the Federal Court, and had all the prop- 
erty sold under a Federal Court decree, at which sale the New 
York creditors became the purchasers; so in 1866 there were 
two claimants to this property. The situation called, indeed, 
for a Solomon. Colonel Colyar went to New York and effected a 
compromise with the New York creditors by which it was agreed 
that $220,000 of first mortgage bonds should be put upon the 
property, and these bonds turned over to the New York creditors. 
They, in turn, agreed to accept these bonds in full payment of 



ADVENT OF TENNESSEE COMPANY 1886 373 



all claims against the property. The debt of the Tennessee 
creditors amounted in round numbers to $140,000. It was 
agreed that $400,000 of stock should be issued, and held in 
. escrow until this $140,000 of debt was paid, when this stock 
; would be distributed ratably to the parties who paid this debt. 
Colonel Colyar went to work getting up these claims and sold 
everything he had, putting the proceeds into the liquidation of 
this debt, and he finally succeeded in clearing up every dollar 
of the indebtedness, when all of the $400,000 of stock was 
issued and turned over to him. He took charge of the prop- 
erty as sole owner on the first day of April, 1866, and placed 
his uncle, Uriah Sherrill, in charge as superintendent and 
manager. Sherrill was a descendant of " Bonny Kate " Sher- 
rill, whose life and whose wedding to John Sevier, " the lion of 
Franklin/' makes one of the romances of the early history of 
Tennessee. Sherrill gave place to G-. A. Shook of Winchester, 
who sent for his nephew, Alfred Montgomery Shook, just out 
of the wars, to help as clerk in the store. Young Shook was 
then scarcely twenty years old. His folk had a farm in Franklin 
County, near Winchester, where, on July 16, 1845, he was born, 
and where he worked until 1862, when he enlisted in Forrest's 
old brigade, Third Tennessee Cavalry. He saw a rough time. 
Wounded and captured at the second battle of Fort Donelson, he 
was sent North to Federal prisons; he pulled through the peni- 
tentiary at Alton, Illinois, and hobbled around Fort Delaware 
prison twenty-six months on crutches; he was paroled in 1865 
and sent South. A tall, well-made, square-shouldered young 
fellow, with a thick crop of black hair blowing back off a finely 
modeled brow, — he was called "the best-looking young fellow 
on Big Mountain." Indeed, he has a strikingly picturesque per- 
sonality. In July, 1886, he started in business as clerk in the 
store of the Tennessee Coal and Eailroad Company with little 
prospect ahead for anything. The visible assets of the Tennessee 
Coal and Eailroad Company then consisted, according to Colonel 
Colyar, of " defective titles to thirty thousand acres of land ; a 
washed-out roadbed of a railroad track; ten tons of coal lying 
outside the ruined entry of Wooten's Bank; the old red mule, 
Kate, that had been feeding off the chestnut ridges so long ; and 
■five Barlow knives" 

Colonel Colyar sold his farm and put his ex-slaves on wages 
in the mines, — mending and laying track and generally re- 



374 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



pairing and rebuilding. To float a company on air is a thing 
a good many business men have had to do, and have done, all 
over, everywhere. They know what it means. Colonel Colyar 
still retained his law office in Nashville, which was a room over 
the Bank of the Union. In 1868 A. T. Duncan was president 
of this bank and he had lately got in his brother-in-law, James 
C. Warner, as cashier. 

Mr. Warner had had rather a varied career. He, too, was a 
Tennesseean. He was the son of a tailor, and was born in Gal- 
latin, Sumter County, 1830. He stayed on the tailor's bench, 
like President Andrew Johnson, till he was almost grown; then 
he struck out for Nashville and got a place as clerk in a whole- 
sale grocery store. Several years later he set up in the hardware 
business for himself in Chattanooga, and took some part in the 
municipal affairs of that town, and finally became mayor. He 
also became secretary and treasurer of the Will's Valley Rail- 
road, now a part of the main line of the Alabama Great South- 
ern, between Chattanooga and Birmingham. Entering the polit- 
ical field, Mr. Warner was elected in 1861 a member of the 
Tennessee Legislature, which was in session at Nashville when 
Eort Donelson fell; of course his political career fell with it. 
He then went into the banking business. 

Colonel Colyar used to talk up his "big" coal mine schemes 
a good deal around the Bank of the Union, and, in fact, all over 
Nashville, and everybody knows the colonel was always " a 
right-fair talker." Both Duncan and Warner became so deeply 
interested, at length, that Duncan put up some capital and ( Colo- 
nel Colyar resigning) was made president of the Tennessee Com- 
pany, while Warner was put in as secretary and manager, dis- 
placing W. Houston, June 15, 1868. The company was again 
reorganized. 

In behalf of the struggling coal company Colonel Colyar also 
succeeded in enlisting the interest and capital of several other 
business men of Nashville, among them being Judge James 
Whitworth, president Fourth National Bank; L. B. Fite, Sam 
Tate, president of the Memphis and Chattanooga Railroad, and 
Moses Wicks, each of whom served as president of the company 
off and on during the next decade. The early presidents of the 
Tennessee Coal and Railroad Company were somewhat like Fin- 
negan's message to Flannigan, " On agin, off agin — gone agin." 
James C. Warner remained steadily as manager. 



ADVENT OF TENNESSEE COMPANY 1886 375 



On one occasion (in 1869) the Tennessee Company could not 
meet its taxes of sixteen dollars and forty cents. The sheriff of 
Grundy County came out with a distress warrant but he could 
find nothing at Tracy City to levy on but the old mule, Kate. 
Accordingly, he attached Kate and started to ride her into 
Jasper, but Kate would not budge. 

" I scurried all around over the country," said Colonel Shook, 
"to raise that sixteen dollars and forty cents, for we had all 
sooner gone without breakfast than lose Kate. I got it at last, 
and Fry Nunley, Kate's driver, and all of us were happy, and 
so was Kate." 

Young Shook was James C. Warner's close second by this 
time, in the management of the company. It struggled along, 
beating the winds for several years. It barely paid costs. 
Warner and Shook stayed right with their work and did what 
they could to straighten up things without any money. "Our 
locomotive used to run on the cross ties half the time," Warner 
said once, in speaking of these days, " and we had to follow it 
with a man on horseback to report its whereabouts." 

Colonel P. H. Marbury of McMinnville, Tennessee, president 
of the McMinnville and Manchester Eailroad Company, served 
as general manager from 1869 to 1870, while Warner acted as 
secretary and treasurer. A contract was made with the State 
of Tennessee in 1871 by negotiations with the firm of Cherry, 
O'Connor and Company, by which the use of State convicts for 
coal mines was secured. Prior to these negotiations convicts 
had been worked in a little coal mine in Sequatchie Valley 
operated by the father of Major E. C. Lewis, the first instance 
on record of using convict labor in the Southern mines. The 
contract with Cherry and O'Connor was, however, the first 
instance on a large commercial scale. 

The output of coal was gradually increased as the demand 
would take it, but in the early eighteen-seventies it became plain 
that if wider market were not created everything would go to the 
wall, in spite of the quality of Sewanee coal. Domestic coal was 
up to that time the sole product for which there was market. 
Every officer in the company became discouraged excepting 
Colonel Colyar. 

The colonel stoutly maintained that the demand would come — 
was bound to come — but to the others it looked uncertain indeed. 
Things drew to a climax. The project of abandoning the whole 



376 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



proposition was at length discussed, and every man except Colo- 
nel Colyar was for dropping it where it lay. 

" No ! " cried the colonel, " we will keep on ! I expect to see 
the time when the Tennessee Coal and Railroad Company 
will mine and sell as much as three hundred tons of coal per day ! " 

All hands in the company then started in with renewed vim to 
boom up a market. They found the only way to use up their 
slack coal would be to make coke. Then the question was, would 
their coal coke? Nobody knew. General Manager Warner and 
young Shook went North to find out how to build a coke. oven. 
At Scottdale, Pennsylvania, Thomas Lynch, superintendent of 
the H. C. Frick Coke Company's valley works, turned cicerone to 
the energetic Tennesseeans and showed how coke was made. 
Lynch never forgot Alfred Montgomery Shook. According to 
Erskine Ramsay, years later he used to tell about " the fine looking 
young mining man who came out of the Tennessee Mountains," 
— never dreaming that this same A. M. Shook would, in time, 
get to be young Ramsay's first Alabama boss. 

After the inspection tour of several of the great coke regions, 
Warner and Shook returned to Tracy City and put up one 
hundred beehive ovens, and found Sewanee coal could make 
coke "nearly as good" as Henry Clay Frick's coke. Next 
they thought they would build them a furnace and find out if 
their coke could make iron. So they set to work, getting sand- 
stone, blacksmith bellows, a stovepipe, an oil barrel for water, 
and they finally "invented" a furnace. They got power from 
the Tracy sawmill, and they had an elevator for the stock 
somewhat like a dumb-waiter. The day the "invention" went 
into blast James Warner said, in the midst of the flying sparks, 
" she 's a fiery gizzard, all right." So " The Fiery Gizzard " it 
became from that time forth. This was the original coke furnace 
of the Tennessee holdings of the United States Steel Corporation. 

" There 's a creek up there in Tennessee," said Colonel Shook, 
"that was also named the Fiery Gizzard a century ago, after a 
Cherokee chief. There's another story, too, about that name. 
Some hunters camped alongside the run to cook a wild turkey 
they'd shot. One of the fellows couldn't wait for the gizzard, 
but hooked it out of the hot skillet and put it in his mouth. 
He yelled like a maniac, and threw it in the stream. His 
language and the hot turkey gizzard," observed the colonel, 
" according to the story, set the water on fire ! " 



ADVENT OF TENNESSEE COMPANY 1886 377 



" The Fiery Gizzard's output of iron," said the colonel, " was 
five tons a day ; total fifteen tons ! " He paused and looked remi- 
niscent : " The stovepipe fell in on the third day," he explained. 
It proved the uses of Sewanee coke, however, and the reduction 
of Eed Mountain ores, and, as a matter of fact, led to the erection, 
shortly afterwards, of the Sewanee Furnace at Cowan and the 
blast furnaces at Chattanooga. The company had now both 
use for its slack coal and market for its coke. And when the 
railroads won out on the fight for coal, fair prospects were 
ahead. 

One morning in early April of 1874, Major T. S. Thomasson 
of Chattanooga ran up to Tracy City with two visitors, Colonel 
Babcock of New York and James Bowron, Esq., a gentleman from 
London, England. Mr. Bowron was on the lookout for mineral 
properties. He had been making, it seemed, an inspection tour 
of North America with the view to building up an industrial 
community with English capital; erecting furnaces, shops, and 
foundries, and opening coal and iron mines. He represented a 
syndicate composed of English iron-masters of the Cleveland 
District, of England, and a member of Parliament or two. On 
introducing his friend to Colonel Shook, the major said, in an 
aside, " Millions back of him ! " 

James Bowron, Sr., was then about sixty, but was as fine in 
physique and robust in constitution as a man much younger. 
"He had the manners of a Chesterfield," observed Colonel 
Shook, "but he never could get on to the way we handled 
Tennessee batter cakes." 

This was Mr. Bowron's second trip to the United States. He 
had toured the States by this time ; " had studied the West Vir- 
ginia field; had prospected through New England and up into 
Canada; had surveyed the great Southwest; had crossed the 
Eio Grande; trodden Mexico, and reviewed California." Now 
he had taken a bit of a fancy to the mountains of Tennessee; 
he had become, indeed, rather keen on the Cumberland Plateau 
country. His boxes he had left at" the Stanton House in Chat- 
tanooga, and he was now in light marching order for a thorough 
going over the ground. Armed with diamond drills and vari- 
ous other boring devices, the elderly and energetic English- 
man tramped over the plateau, day after day, week after week, 
in foul weather and fair. At length one spot took his eye, — 



378 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



the old Ally farm nested in a cove^of the Sequatchie Valley 
(Sequatchie was Cherokee for "hog wallow," and Tennessee 
meant "crooked spoon"). This farm was at the big bend 
of the Tennessee, where Andrew Jackson and his men had 
crossed in the beginning of the century into Alabama. The 
broad brown river swept curving, midway the valley, between 
the Cumberland Plateau — all coal — and Walden's Ridge, 
which was all iron. Down from out the steep, wooded, Cum- 
berland side, and flowing to the river, past the Ally farm, 
gushed the historic little Battle Creek that got its name in the 
wars. 

To James Bowron, standing on the Cumberland Heights and 
looking down a thousand feet below, it seemed the place he 
wanted for the making of a town. Aside from the picturesque 
and curiously beautiful aspect of the place — then all grown in 
fruit and corn and cotton, and wild and sweet with mountain 
laurel and azalea, the practical advantages struck his English eye. 
It was only forty miles below Chattanooga and direct on the 
Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad. It had river frontage, 
high location, good water supply, natural drainage facilities 
besides rich fields of coal and iron. It was the very place he 
sought. He made a careful survey, selecting his mines. He 
hastened back to Tracy City, and asked Colonel Shook and Mr. 
Warner to introduce him to the president of the Nashville and 
Chattanooga Railroad, E. W. Cole. He wanted to see if that 
official could be induced to extend a track to the mines he had 
determined on opening. He found Mr. Cole favorable to the 
proposition. After communicating with Thomas Whitwell and 
the other members of the English Syndicate, the Ally farm was 
purchased as a site for a town, and contiguous coal and ore lands 
to the extent of one hundred and sixty-three thousand acres 
were acquired. 

Always an admirer of the hustling Pennsylvania mining town, 
Mr. Bowron named his town South Pittsburg. That he might 
not seem to honor England less, he, however, named the coal 
mines station Victoria, as a tribute to his queen. And Victoria 
it stands to-day. Further details relating to these projects and 
achievements of the Southern States Coal, Iron, and Land Com- 
pany will be treated presently upon its merger with the Tennessee 
Company. 

The coal and iron business of the Cumberland Plateau 



ADVENT OF TENNESSEE COMPANY 1886 379 



country began now to promise fair going, having in operation 
the Tennessee Company and a close neighboring enterprise. By 
the year 1879-80, however, the control of the Tennessee Company 
properties passed from the doughty lawyer, Colonel Colyar, to the 
firm holding the lease of the State convicts. Ownership of the 
Tracy City coal mines and coke ovens was now acquired by four 
men: Thomas O'Connor, W. H. Cherry, William Morrow, and 
Alfred M. Shook. This holding was transferred for hire of the 
convicts, debt for which had been accumulating for ten years. 

The Tennessee Company was again reorganized, and William 
Morrow was elected president of the new organization. He was 
then State treasurer of Tennessee. He was born in 1839 in 
Jacksboro, Campbell County, and educated at the University of 
Knoxville. He was interested financially in the Eising Fawn 
and Chattanooga furnace companies, as well as in the Tracy 
City operations. Throughout his life he has been more or less 
identified with the coal and iron business of Tennessee. 

Early in the year 1880 the new officers of the Tennessee 
Company purchased one hundred acres at Cowan Junction, and 
organized the Sewanee Furnace Company. A fifty-ton blast 
furnace was constructed in order that a market might be pro- 
vided for the slack coal of the Tracy City mines. This furnace, 
yet spoken of as the Old Sewanee furnace, successor to the Fiery 
Gizzard, was the first bona fide blast furnace of the Tennessee 
Company, and it was designed and constructed by Major Edward 
Doud. Three Whitwell stoves and two Weimer blowing engines 
were installed, making it thus the most up-to-date proposition 
in the way of a blast furnace in middle Tennessee in the year 
1881. Its cost was $100,000, and under Major Doud's manage- 
ment it paid this cost the first year. During Mr. Nat Baxter's 
regime some years later, the Whitwell stoves and the precious 
Weimers and all the machinery of the furnace were moved down 
to Ensley, Alabama, and patched up into No. 5. The old 
Sewanee furnace had been in operation but a short while when 
the officers of the Sewanee Furnace Company merged it into 
the Tennessee Company's holdings. 

Shortly after the company started iron making, a young man 
named George B. McCormack received the job of shipping clerk 
at Tracy City. He had been in and around the neighborhood 
for a few months, but no one on the mountain knew much about 
him beyond the fact that he was " very quiet/' and that he had 



380 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



come "from somewhere in Arkansas." He had been acting 
as coal agent for the Memphis and Charleston Railroad, and 
was stationed at Tracy City by the superintendent, R. B. 
Pegram. He had, in fact, brought a letter of introduction to 
Pegram from an official of the St. Louis, Iron Mountain, and 
Southern Railroad. Owing to ill health, young McCormack had 
resigned his position as telegraph operator and station agent 
in their company. The duties of coal agent had their limitations, 
however. Seeing that six or eight cars of coal were correctly 
weighed each day by the Tennessee Coal Company for the 
Memphis and Charleston Railroad was a pretty slight task. 
Yet, indeed, it was about all the boy had strength to attend to. 
Chills and fever, gotten in his system while working at the 
malarial stations down in Arkansas, had laid him waste. He 
had been assigned by the St. Louis, Iron Mountain, and Southern 
Railroad to Arkansas from the year he started out to make his 
own way. 

He was a farmer's son, and his folk were Scotch-Irish. He was 
born in Jefferson County, Missouri, April 4, 1859, and attended 
the little county school until about his thirteenth year, when 
his father sent him to boarding school for a short term. He was 
an odd, shy, patient little fellow, with a fine-shaped head and 
sharp, keen senses. He had, too, a certain dry humor. He kept 
to himself a good deal and had a great turn for inventions. For 
instance, he had not been many weeks in the school before he 
rigged up a "telegraph line" to the room of the boy across the 
hall. At night, at recess, and in between recitation hours, he 
would send most important messages to that other boy ; he would 
save trains from wreck, tell of fires and battles and presidential 
elections. 

Telegraphy taken up thus "for fun" served the boy in good 
stead. The very next year, when conditions at home made it 
necessary for him to quit school and go to work for a living, 
he had a profession at hand, young as he was. With but little 
more study and practice he was qualified to be a professional 
operator and secured a place with the St. Louis, Iron Mountain, 
and Southern Railroad, and was ordered, as has been said, to the 
swamps of Arkansas. From here, just a few years later, emaci- 
ated, physically a wreck, he came to the mountains of Tennessee 
in hope of health, where he got the job of weighing six cars of 
coal a day for thirty dollars per month. 



ADVENT OF TENNESSEE COMPANY 1886 381 



As the plateau air got into his lungs he began slowly to gain 
new vigor. Having coal at hand, he decided to study mining and 
got together what books he could and did a considerable amount 
of reading on the subject. During loafing times he fished and 
hunted, and to this day likes it better than most anything. All 
of a sudden Pegram decided that weighing the coal was not 
necessary and the boy found himself out of a job again. It 
happened that the Tennessee Company needed a shipping clerk, 
so Shook took on young McCormack, agreeing to pay him 
thirty dollars per month. There was more horizon to this sort 
of a place than there had been with the Memphis and Charles- 
ton, and it became evident to Warner and Shook that the young 
man needed simply a little more room to turn around in to 
prove his nettle. The assistant general bookkeeper resigned 
and young McCormack took up his duties in addition to those 
of shipping clerk. He was so accurate, quick, painstaking, and 
conscientious in the office work that he was soon made general 
bookkeeper and cashier, then train dispatcher, and given a raise 
of ten dollars. 

As train dispatcher he had entire charge of the operation of 
old Major Barney's "sky railroad." This road was then, in 
spite of Colonel Colyar's and Mr. Warner's heroic efforts, not 
much more than a couple of streaks of rust up through the 
woods. It was very loosely run. There was no system ; no man- 
agement. Young McCormack put the road in some sort of work- 
ing shape; he introduced the selling of tickets, the checking of 
baggage, and the way-billing of freight. Nothing got mixed up 
or tangled any more. McCormack never forgot the slightest 
detail, nor slurred it over. Detail was his strong point. He 
was quietly energetic, he never "kicked," and never "bossed." 
All the men on the works began to like the boy in time and 
the way he did things. It was found, in fact, that the young 
man was game. He never undertook anything that he did not 
put through. And he was not afraid of work. 

One afternoon Colonel Shook chanced to remark in the office, 
that he thought he would get him a stenographer. Young Mc- 
Cormack looked up from the debit and credit columns: "I'd 
be glad to see if I could take your letters, Colonel Shook," he 
ventured, "if you'll give me time enough to get hold of a 
shorthand book." 

" How much time d' ye want, Mac ? " the colonel asked. 



382 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 

" I 'd like to have three weeks or so." 
"All right," said the colonel. 

In less time than that George B. McCormack reported to the 
general manager for duty as stenographer, and he suited the 
colonel right well. In short order he became expert. He got 
another raise, which brought his salary up to fifty dollars per 
month for everything combined — shipping clerk, general book- 
keeper, cashier, train dispatcher, railroad superintendent, and 
stenographer and private secretary to General Manager Shook. 
At the time that young McCormack entered the service of the 
Tennessee Company, the four mines then in operation at Tracy 
City were turning out one thousand tons of coal per day. One 
hundred and seventy-six coke ovens made seventeen cars of coke 
daily and the company supplied Chattanooga, Terre Haute, and 
the South Pittsburg furnaces. Four hundred convicts were em- 
ployed. The railroad, comprising main stem, branches, and 
sidings, was now twenty-seven miles in extent and there were four 
other locomotives, together with one hundred and fifty main 
line cars. 

Major O'Connor was at this period the main backing, in a 
financial way, of the little company. He was, from a money 
standpoint, one of the big men of Tennessee. He was known 
all over the State, and cut something of a figure in politics. He 
had, in fact, been spoken of as a likely candidate for vice-president 
of the United States in the Hancock convention of 1880. At 
the time that he became a majority stockholder and director of 
the Tennessee Company he was president of the Mechanics' 
National Bank of Knoxville, and was, at the same time, inter- 
ested in many railroad and mining enterprises. His partner in 
the Tennessee Company affairs, William Harrell Cherry, was a 
native Tennesseean from old North Carolinian stock. He was 
born in 1822 in Lowryville, Hardin County, and was educated 
in Savannah, Georgia, where he began in the banking business. 
General Ulysses S. Grant made Cherry's Georgian home his 
headquarters before the battle of Shiloh. 1 After the war Mr. 
Cherry became president of the Merchants' National Bank of 
Memphis, but in 1881 he moved to Nashville, where he event- 
ually became associated with William Morrow and Thomas 

1 Data received from Mr. Cherry's granddaughter, Juliet, the wife of 
Webb Crawford, president of the American Trust and Savings Bank of 
Birmingham, Alabama. 



ADVENT OF TENNESSEE COMPANY 1886 383 



O'Connor. At his death Mr. Cherry owned over $100,000 
worth of Tennessee Company stock, then listed on the New York 
Stock Exchange for twenty-five to fifty cents on the dollar, 
but he never considered this stock "worth the paper it was 
written on." 

Late in the fall of 1881 John H. Inman, senior member of 
Inman, Swan, and Company, one of the largest cotton houses 
in the world, acquired majority interest of the Tennessee Com- 
pany's stocks. Inman was a Tennesseean and an ex-Confederate 
soldier. He had gone to ISTew York City just after the war to 
work as clerk for his uncle in the cotton business. He gradually 
built up a trade of his own, adopted the policy of buying and 
storing his cotton and not dealing in futures, and soon estab- 
lished a sound credit as a base on which to rear the superstructure 
of his far-reaching operations. He became a member of the 
cotton exchange and a large individual holder of securities in 
various Southern railroads. He was president of the Eichmond 
and Danville Railroad, and one of the most conspicuous of the 
group of Southerners in the Empire State. " In some respects," 
the New York Sun has said of Inman, " he was a carpet bagger 
in Wall Street." Certain it is he was shrewd, and made more 
money and lost less than any other cotton speculator on record. 
He was received in Nashville with open arms. He had letters 
of credit to the various banks of the city, among them one to 
the president of the First National Bank of Nashville, Nathaniel 
Baxter, Jr. 

" Nat " Baxter, like his brothers, had been born and bred in 
the law. The name Baxter is a well-known name in Tennessee ; 
the men of the family were lawyers, bankers, and judges for 
generations, — "all told, a brainy set," says T. H. Aldrich. 
When Nat Baxter, Jr., was born in 1847, at Columbia, up in 
Maury County, his father was judge of the circuit court of 
Nashville, a position held by him for twenty-eight successive 
years. His boys took to the law as ducks to water. Young 
Nathaniel went in a trifle for tactics in addition, as most of 
the boys around there began to do while there was war talk in 
the air. In his fifteenth year he enlisted as a private in Free- 
man's Battery of Artillery, and served with General Forrest 
all over the Cumberland country. He was twice wounded, and 
at length captured at the battle of Franklin and put in a Fed- 
eral jail. His war experience is related in detail in John Allen 



384 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



Wyeth's " Lif e of Forrest." After the war Nat Baxter 
settled down in Nashville and studied law. He soon became 
clerk and master of the chancery court, then clerk of supreme 
court, switching off finally to go in the banking business. It 
was John Inman, it seems, who was responsible for his sudden 
turn to the coal and iron business. Mr. Inman invited Mr. 
Baxter to go up with him on an inspection tour of Big Mountain, 
and they liked the looks of the place. Colonel Robert C. Looney, 
who then held an option on the purchase of the Tennessee Com- 
pany stock, wished to sell his stock to Inman. Returning to 
Nashville the men held session at the Maxwell House. This 
was the time that Colonel Enoch Ensley, hearing of the business 
through Colonel Looney, hastened up from Memphis, all agog to 
get in such a big deal, only to find he was too late. Thoroughly 
angry he boarded the next train for Birmingham, Alabama, 
where, as has been already related, he made history with the first 
million dollar deal on record in that State, got him a coal 
mine of his own, and formed the Pratt Coal and Iron Company. 

When the preliminaries of the Tennessee deal were concluded, 
Inman started in at once on a complete reorganization of the 
little company that had already been so frequently reorganized 
that its original lines were all but obliterated. This time, how- 
ever, the reorganization took place " with a view to its expansion 
and development." Mr. Inman appointed Mr. Baxter president 
ad interim, " until," Mr. Baxter said, " he could look about and 
decide on someone better acquainted than I was with the coal 
business." At length he selected James C. Warner, then acting 
as superintendent and manager of the company, and made him 
president, while Mr. Baxter was appointed vice-president, and 
Colonel Shook, general manager. Negotiations looking to the 
trade of the South Pittsburg properties were commenced. 

This property of the Cleveland iron-masters acquired, as has 
been related, in the early eighteen-seventies, by James Bowron, 
Sr., for the Southern States Coal, Iron, and Land Company, 
Limited, of England, had come to be a considerable business by 
1881, but, just at this particular juncture, it had stripped 
itself of working capital and was on the verge of bankruptcy. 
In the first place, the town, the mines, and the furnace plant and 
shops had been constructed, regardless of cost, permanence being 
the main object. The old Ally farm was laid out by Mr. Bowron 
into broad frontage lots, with streets and avenues, wide, curbed, 



ADVENT OF TENNESSEE COMPANY 1886 385 



macadamized^ and lined with trees. Drainage and sewerage sys- 
tems were installed, as well as lighting and water works. Pleasant 
cottages and residences, each with its attendant garden plot and 
orchard close, were erected, and a schoolhouse was built. All 
that, at a time too early in the century for " model towns," too 
English in style for the Tennessee backwoods, too ideal for ap- 
preciation, had been done at excessive cost. Machinery such as 
was used at Thornaby itself was imported at heavy cost, with 
heavy customs and freight charges; for instance, a movable 
steam crane of the Appleby brothers make was imported, when 
for the Sequatchie Valley a common derrick and a few good 
Tennessee mules had served the purpose and kept the business 
off the rocks. It was, in fact, the application of United States 
Steel Corporation principles without United States Steel Cor- 
poration capital, and of course, a perilous essay. 

The Southern States Coal, Iron, and Land Company, Limited, 
was organized and officered by Thomas Whitwell, James Bowron, 
Sr., and James Bowron, Jr. Others of the officers and directors 
were : Henry F. Pease, coal owner, Darlington ; William Barrett, 
managing director. Norton Iron Company, Limited, Stockton; 
Edwin Lucas Pease, M. P., William Henry Hewlett, Henry 
Barrett, iron and brass founder, London; Joshua Stagg Byers, 
director Stockton iron furnace, and William Eamwell. 

The name of Thomas Whitwell is known in metallurgical 
circles all over the globe. Of a family of Quakers, as were the 
Bowrons, he was born at Kendal, in the year 1837. After 
serving his apprenticeship in the locomotive works of Eobert 
Stephenson and Company at Newcastle on Tyne, he embarked 
independently and, with his brother, established the Thornaby 
iron works of Stockton. Blast furnaces, rolling mills, and 
machine shops were built up with extraordinary rapidity for an 
English operation. Trade was extended by Whitwell throughout 
the world, for he was connected with all commercial points of 
the continent, in the far Orient, in the United States, and the 
Dominion of Canada. The young iron-master invented all sorts 
and kinds of labor-saving devices in blast furnace construction, 
among them being the Whitwell stove, that eventually led the 
trade in every country where the production of raw iron reached 
the stage of marked commercial development. Whitwell was the 
founder of the Cleveland Institute of Engineers and its first 
president. He was the great authority of the world at that time 

25 



386 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



on blast furnace construction. Two boys, besides James Bowron, 
Jr., who, working under Whitwell, years later, became identified 
with blast furnace construction in Alabama, were Harry Har- 
greaves and James Shannon. Thomas Whitwell was the ideal 
of the working boys of all England. An incident is told of Mr. 
Whitwell by William Jones of Middlesbrough-on-Tees, which 
gives some idea of his character. He was in France just 
after the Franco-Prussian War, when all France lay prostrate and 
the spring was beating forlorn wings over the land, and there 
was dearth of seed and coming specter of famine. Thomas 
Whitwell, the English iron-master, rode on horseback across 
the stripped and blackened lands and distributed seed corn far 
and near to the families of the dead. He rode by night and he 
rode by day, and the last that his friend saw of him was as he 
disappeared into the gray of the Northern round, up into the 
gloom of the battlefield of Chateaudun. 

Such was the man who led the young company whose holdings 
in the State of Tennessee now belong to the Tennessee Coal, Iron, 
and Railroad Company. 

James Bowron, Sr., the originator of the Southern States 
Coal, Iron, and Land Company, while neither an iron-master 
nor a mining man in the literal sense of the word, was something 
of a metallurgist, a chemist, and a geologist, and a practical 
observer, informed as only the traveled and scholarly Englishman 
of means is informed. He was born in 1816 at the Quaker settle- 
ment of Darlington, England, his family treading back to the 
North Riding of Yorkshire. 1 His father had been a friend and 
associate of Edward Pease who, with George Stephenson, con- 
structed the first railroad in the world — the Stockton and Dar- 

1 The original progenitor of the Bowron family was a miller dating 
from William the Conqueror's day. A descendant of his fought at Agin- 
court, and was given a coat of arms depicting a bar of mill iron on a black 
and silver shield in memory of the sturdy miller. This coat of arms is 
held to-day by the American branch of the family, as by their English 
cousins. Another historical incident well held in the Bowron family, and 
not generally known outside, concerned that member who made Quakers 
of them all. According to the Records of the Society of Friends, John 
Bowron was born 1627, died 1704. The memoir speaks of his convince- 
ment by George Fox and James Taylor, about the year 1653, and of his 
journey to Scotland about 1656, "from whence he sailed to Barbadoes, 
and from thence had long and perilous passage of thirteen weeks to Eng- 
land. For five weeks they were reduced to one biscuit and one pint of 
water, each, daily. On reaching England, John Bowron met with a mes- 
sage from the Lord to Richard Cromwell, and warned him of the day of 
the Lord. He then appears to have spent part of his days in prison. He 
desired his son, Henry Bowron, to go to the Meeting and acquaint Friends 
that his days were nearly spent." 



ADVENT OF TENNESSEE COMPANY 1886 387 



lington Eailroad. A vivid recollection of James Bowron 
himself was the public opening of this historic railroad, which 
he had attended as a little boy, August 25, 1825. The boy 
started in business with a firm of wholesale groceries, and 
eventually became interested in a number of big commercial and 
manufacturing, mining, and railroading enterprises. Out of his 
glass bottle manufactory at Stockton-on-Tees he realized a 
comfortable fortune, and retiring, took up his residence with 
his family in London. 

His son, James Bowron, Jr., was born November 16, 1844, at 
Stockton-on-Tees, at one end of the historic railroad whose be- 
ginning his father had seen. He first attended a Quaker dame's 
school, "for little boys perfectly good," as he laughingly said. 
When fourteen years old he went to work as office boy in the 
Tees glass works owned by his father. He studied at night and 
worked up quickly through the various grades — junior clerk, 
shipping clerk, timekeeper, paymaster, and accountant. Before 
he was eighteen years old he was made general manager of the 
glass works at Middlesbrough, in which the Tees glass works 
owned half interest. When the two were merged into a stock com- 
pany under the Tees Bottle Company, James Bowron, Jr., became 
secretary and treasurer of the concern, and at the same time 
acted as auditor of the Forcett Eailway Company and the 
Forcett Limestone Company, two of the enterprises set on foot 
by his father. About this same time he became actively identi- 
fied with the Young Men's Christian Association in Stockton. 
The honorary secretary of this Y. M. C. A. was the iron-master, 
Thomas Whitwell. For young Bowron, who was an omnivorous 
reader and mentally energetic out of common, Mr. Whitwell 
came to have marked interest and close friendship. 

At length young Mr. Bowron assumed charge of the glass 
works, from which his father had retired, and in addition was 
auditor of the Tyne Chemical Company. He visited France, 
Germany, and Belgium in the interests of his company, and 
there was no historic spot in his own country that he did not 
come to know, stock and stone. In the year 1870 his marriage 
to Ada Louisa Barrett, daughter of the president of the Norton 
iron works, took place. Mr. Bowron established his home on the 
seacoast at Eed Car, going to and from his office daily. Through 
his father-in-law, Mr. Barrett, he became interested in the iron 
business in a mercantile way, and, in 1872, organized with his 



388 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



brother, Joseph Bowron, a general mercantile establishment with 
headquarters at Stockton-on-Tees and at Carthagena, Spain. He 
visited Spain frequently in pursuance of his business. Mean- 
while, keeping up his other interests, he frequently ran up to 
London to see his father. William Barrett and Thomas Whitwell 
used occasionally to meet at the London home of James Bowron, 
Sr., and frequently American tourists were also guests. Talk 
gradually drifted to the States. Mr. Bowron, Sr., took up the 
study of North America with his customary vim. Maps of every 
section of the United States soon crammed the London house. 
The social evenings gradually evolved into business meetings, 
resulting at length in the formation of the company known as 
the Southern States Coal, Iron, and Land Company, Limited. 

To James Bowron, Sr., was assigned the task that had by 
this time become his heart's desire, to " explore " the United 
States of America. The bulk of his own capital he put into the 
undertaking and started forth buoyant for "the States." On 
his first trip he did not locate just the mineral properties he was 
looking for, and, on his second trip (1874) the State of Ten- 
nessee became his main objective point. The little business then 
being done at Tracy City seemed very promising from Colonel 
Colyar's newspaper accounts as they were read over seas, and 
here Mr. Bowron determined to pitch camp and give minute 
investigation. His visit to J. C. Warner and Colonel Shook 
had been detailed, as well as his final selection of the mineral 
holdings and town site for his company. 

In the summer of 1877, James Bowron, Jr., at Thomas 
Whitwell's request and at offer of a large salary, severed his 
business interests in England and in Spain, and left with his 
family, and a small retinue of industrial workers for the Ameri- 
can wilderness, where they joined Mr. Bowron, Sr., and young 
Bowron became assistant general manager. Thomas Whitwell 
himself also came over in that same year to inspect the 
properties. 1 

1 Occasional entertainments brightened the South Pittsburg life 
from time to time. The Jasper Herald records one of these " Social even- 
ings," as follows: "The officers of the Southern States Coal, Iron, and 
Land Company, at South Pittsburg, gave an entertainment at their new 
hotel, on last Tuesday evening, which it was our good pleasure to attend. 
Posters had been printed announcing the fact, and early in the evening 
the citizens of the vicinity, as well as quite a number from Jasper and 
Ebenezer, began to assemble, notwithstanding the prospect was good for 
a wet and disagreeable night; but the clouds soon passed away, and the 
moon came out in all her splendor, making it one of the most delightful 



ADVENT OF TENNESSEE COMPANY 1886 389 



Actual working operations had not up to 1877 been inaugu- 
rated owing to the big plan of construction work. An immense 
fortune had been put in the place and funds in the English com- 
pany's treasury were now at ebb tide and the Cleveland iron- 
masters began to sight the specter of Scylla and Charybdis 
along the river Tennessee. 

Worn out with the burden of the new labors, the new perils 
and uncertainties, and all of his big hopes seeming to be but 
fleeting shadows, the elder Bowron died, late in the summer of 
this year, 1877. Practically the whole of his capital, and, indeed, 
his every dream were buried in South Pittsburg. 

The directors of the Southern States Coal, Iron, and Land 
Company cabled his son to assume the management. Said 
James Bowron, Jr., speaking of this, " I knew nothing of what 

and pleasant nights of the season. The guests enjoyed themselves in 
social conversation on the portico and in the front yard until the lamps 
were lighted, when all were invited into the hall, where we were entertained 
by readings from Byron's and Dickens' works, instrumental music, and a 
dissertation on Woman's Rights, by the indefatigable, irrepressible, and 
inimitable Frank R. Leavett, Esq. Mr. Bowron, Jr., read The Battle of 
Waterloo. ' There was a sound of revelry by night,' etc. 

" We have often heard this piece read, but never in such a splendid and 
faultless manner as it was read by Mr. B. Next was music by the Ebenezer 
String Band, which was very fine. After a few minutes' intermission, Mr. 
Amos gave a reading from Dickens' works, which was entertaining and 
amusing and well done. The band then again enlivened the occasion with 
several fine pieces, after which Mr. Bowron gave us Henry of Navarre, 
which was listened to attentively by the guests. Miss Kelly then sang 
for us, ' He has the money too,' which was done in a faultless manner; and 
at the conclusion of which, supper was announced. We neglected to state 
that that prince of hotel keepers, Mr. Reed, and his accomplished daughter, 
were running the culinary department, and the mere announcement of this 
fact is evidence enough that the supper was first-class in every respect. 
The doors of the dining-room were thrown open, and the guests invited 
to walk in and be seated around the well-supplied tables, which they did, 
and with attentive waiters an their elbows, of course ample justice was 
done to the viands. After supper was over the guests repaired to the 
front yard to witness the fireworks which were being displayed in good 
earnest ; skyrockets ascending higher and higher until they seemed to be 
'little stars sailing around the moon.' The fireworks closing about 11 
o'clock, and the train having arrived on its return from Chattanooga, we, 
together with a portion of the guests, took passage for Jasper, where we 
arrived about 12 p. m. longing to be 'put in our little bed.' The bard, 
together with a majority of those present remained, and, clearing out the 
dining-room, kept time to music in the mazy dance until the wee small 
hours of morning. The whole affair was one of the most pleasant and in- 
teresting ones that we have ever attended. Messrs. Bowron, Amos, and 
Leavett did all in their power to make each and every one pleasant and 
comfortable, and they deserve, and have the thanks and well wishes of all 
who were present, for their generous hospitality and untiring efforts to 
please and entertain all. We had forgotten that it was leap year until 
reminded of the fact by the attentions shown our modest and unassum- 
ing friend, Al Lancaster, by one of the worthy ladies." 



390 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



I was now called upon to do. Mining, metallurgy, coal, iron, 
coke manufacture, pig iron making, blast furnace construction, 
building of foundries, machine shops, lime kilns, fire-brick works, 
— I had it all to learn. I had to learn how to make and de- 
velop a town, sell lots and houses, get and locate settlers and 
workmen, learn a thousand things I had never tackled before." 
Nevertheless, he went straight ahead against the heavy odds, 
his friend, Thomas Whitwell, though five thousand miles away, 
holding out a hand of encouragement. 

Scarcely a year after the death of its founder, James Bowron, 
Sr., the little English community, lonely in the Sequatchie 
Valley, was struck with grief upon receiving the cabled news, 
August 5, 1878, of Thomas Whitwell's death, in a gas explosion 
at the Thornaby iron works. This, like the tragedy of Captain 
Bill Jones' death, some time later, was a shock to the iron world 
of both continents. 

For South Pittsburg, too, it meant not only the loss of its 
best friend but practically dislocation of the home office. Fore- 
seeing events, James Bowron endeavored to effect a consolida- 
tion with the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company at terms 
advantageous to his own company, but his directors would not 
then hear of it. Four years of struggle ensued, with a hard fight 
to make good. Expenses piled up in spite of the economical 
principles of the new management. The English directors be- 
came profoundly discouraged. Finally they were for letting it 
go for any price. It was at this point that Nat Baxter, Jr., 
leaped into the breach, consummating his first coal and iron 
trade. On February 1, 1882, the Southern States Coal, Iron, and 
Land Company, Limited, was acquired by the Tennessee Coal 
and Iron Company for the purchase price of $700,000 of stock 
and $700,000 in bonds, secured by a mortgage on the property 
purchased. The capital stock of the Tennessee Company was 
then increased to $3,000,000. This business, like old Bilbo's 
$50,000 trade thirty years before, became the talk of Nashville. 
Now, instead of the Southern States Coal, Iron, and Land Com- 
pany, Limited, acquiring the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company, 
the Tennessee Company got the English concern for paper alone. 
By this deal the Tennessee Company thus became the largest 
coal and iron property in the State of Tennessee, in 1882. 

James Bowron, Jr., then entered the services of the Tennessee 
Coal and Iron Company with which company he was to be 



ADVENT OF TENNESSEE COMPANY 1886 391 

identified for the ensuing twenty years, first as secretary and 
treasurer and eventually as vice-president. 

During the progress of the two or three years following the 
deal with Southern States Company the Tennessee Company 
settled down to steady business, having in hand now three big 
divisions — Tracy City, Cowan, and South Pittsburg. The Tracy 
City coal mines were the most extensive in Tennessee, having a 
daily output for 1250 tons. The company continued further to 
develop their properties. They increased the output at Tracy 
City, finished up and put in blast the second furnace at South 
Pittsburg, relaid the old railroad line with steel rails, secured 
funds for the construction of a railroad from Victoria to Inman, 
Tennessee, and opened up at that point mines of fossiliferous 
ore which was then used in both Cowan and South Pittsburg 
furnaces. The Tennessee securities, with Inman at the base, 
now began to attract attention on the New York Stock Exchange. 
Then and there the game began that had no let up, foul or 
fair, until the United States Steel Corporation lifted the com- 
pany out of the reach of the bulls and bears, in 1907, twenty-five 
years later. James C. Warner was still acting president 1 and Nat 

1 In addition to managing the Tennessee Company, President Warner 
was interested in various other mining and iron-making enterprises in 
Tennessee and Georgia. His health began to fail under the incessant 
strain of work and in October, 1885, he resigned. His letter to the directors 
of the T. C. I. is as follows : " Gentlemen — Continued ill-health unfits me 
for the duties required and induces me to resign the office of president of 
your company, to take effect at the earliest day possible. I regret the 
necessity that forces me to sever my connection with so pleasant an as- 
sociation, and from whom I have always received the utmost kindness 
and consideration." 

In accepting the resignation of Mr. Warner, the directors passed the 
following resolution : 

"We part from our president, James C. Warner, with a feeling far 
beyond the ordinary regrets of severing business relations. The company 
over which he has so long presided was the initial step in the great business 
of mining coal, burning coke, and making iron in Tennessee, and its steady 
growth from a small beginning to its present magnitude is due in a great 
measure to Mr. Warner, who was first for many years its business manager 
and more recently its president. 

" While we are sad over the failing health of Mr. Warner, which makes 
it necessary for him to retire, we separate from him with the pleasing con- 
sciousness that every member of the Board will carry with him through 
life the consciousness that in the business affairs of life he was as brave and 
trustworthy as in social life he is gentle and lovable." 

Directly following President Warner's resignation Nat Baxter, Jr., 
succeeded to the office. Colonel Shook continued as general manager until 
early in 1886, when, at the annual election of officers W. M. Duncan secured 
control of the majority of the Tennessee Company proxies and appointed 
Mr. Bowron general manager, although retaining Mr. Baxter as president. 
Mr. Baxter eventually joined Colonel Shook and Mr. Hillman in securing 
Inman 's backing in the scheme to acquire Colonel Ensley's Alabama hold- 



392 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



Baxter, Jr., Colonel Shook, and Mr. Bowron were his associate 
officers. When Colonel Shook ran down from Tracy City into 
Nashville, he occasionally brought with him young George B. 
McCormack. 

" Looks as if Shook 's putting on a good deal of side," Presi- 
dent Nat Baxter observed, " coming here out of the woods with 
a secretary and stenographer! He's got so big he don't want 
to write his own letters, eh ! — must dictate 'em ! " 

Pretty soon it came to pass, however, that the colonel could 
scarcely get McCormack away from Baxter and Bowron's dicta- 
tions. "I tell you," said the colonel, "McCormack was an 
expert ! " 

By this time the young man was indeed beginning to be a 
marked figure. In the first place, he had obtained such a grip on 
the details of the company's business as was not held by any 
other one individual. He spent practically the whole of his 
days in the company's service. He made a habit of looking up 
ways and means employed elsewhere, and adopting any little 
device he read about or devised himself that improved and mod- 
ernized things at a minimum of cost, and that would show up 
results. And he never said anything about it, but just went 
ahead and put in the new ways right and left, wherever new 
ways were needed. All the while he kept working steadily, a little 
at a time on lines he was interested in, and that would serve 
to make him of more practical use to the business. He studied 
geology, metallurgy, physics, and chemistry, and even took a 
brief excursion into mining, civil, and railroad engineering. He 
was after facts, just plain, straight, every-day facts. There was 
not a single working feature of the company's operations, or 
any important facts of a social or economic, or political, phase 
or condition which young McCormack did not have on fingers' 
ends, nor, which is more to the point, was there any man in the 
company, or concerned with the company, whose measure he did 
not have. 

" The main thing about McCormack is his common sense," is 

the inevitable comment on the man. And there indeed is the 

meat of him ; a fine good sense, — better in the coal, iron, and 

steel business, and in world-making everywhere, — than all the 

fires of genius. Applied at this period of George B. McCormack's 

ings, and make a trade with the Tennessee Company. The upshot was the 
entrance of the T. C. I. into the State of Alabama as described at the begin- 
ning of this chapter. 



ADVENT OF TENNESSEE COMPANY 1886 393 



career, it began to breed in him those qualities of cool judgment, 
practical wisdom, and personal force which were to make him 
in later years the great captain of modern industrial Alabama. 
Then, as now, he was utterly above the region of petty confu- 
sions, jealousies, and excitements. That he carried a head on 
his rather slight shoulders — a head for statecraft indeed — 
began to be vaguely discerned at this early period of his inter- 
esting career. While vaguely discerned then, it is plainly appar- 
ent to-day, when, as president of the Alabama Coal Operators' 
Association, as president of the Pratt Consolidated Coal Com- 
pany, as indeed as a business man of rare power and influence, 
he has come at last into his leadership. 



CHAPTER XXIV 

A SERIES OF LIVELY INCIDENTS IN THE BIRMINGHAM AND 
SHEFFIELD DISTRICTS 1887 

Founding of the city of Ensley by Colonel Ensley. Records of Ensley 
Land Company. Sensational first sale. End of town boom. Colonel 
Shook introduces an accounting system at Pratt mines. "The fatal 
monkey wrench." Llewellyn Johns resigns. A young Pennsylvania 
Scotch engineer is recommended. Biographical sketch of Erskine 
Ramsay. Association of Erskine and Ramsay families with early 
coal history of Scotland and the United States. Specific details of 
daily life and work of a boy in the mining world of Pennsylvania. 
First engineering corps of Tennessee Company organized by young 
Ramsay. Improvements inaugurated by him. Introduction of coal 
washers, revolving dumps, and skip-cars. Meeting of International 
Association of Metallurgists and Mineralogists in Birmingham. En- 
trance of James Henderson. First steel-making experiment of Ala- 
bama. Sketch of Colonel J. W. Bush. Results of interesting experi- 
ment by Henderson Company. Erection of "The Big Four" at Ensley. 
Resignation of Colonel Ensley from presidency of T. C. I. Pioneer 
work of Walter Moore. Organization of Lady Ensley Coal, Iron, and 
Railroad Company. Moore and Ensley open up Sheffield District. Con- 
nection of certain properties of Pratt Consolidated Coal Company and 
Sloss-Sheffield Steel and Iron Company with operations of Moore and 
Ensley. Development of Tennessee Valley counties. Beginning of 
town of Sheffield. Biographical sketch of Alfred H. Moses. The Shef- 
field Land, Iron, and Coal Company formed. Ways and means of build- 
ing up the town. Alabama and Tennessee Iron and Coal Company 
concentrates in Colbert County. Horace Ware's predictions for Sheffield. 
William Garrott Brown's account of boom days. Consolidation of 
Sheffield and Birmingham Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company. Group 
of present-day promoters. Town of Florence awakes from long sleep. 
Organization of the Florence Land, Mining, and Manufacturing Com- 

gany. Sketch of William B. Wood. Formation of Wood Furnace 
ompany. John M. Norton's work. Activity of North Alabama Fur- 
nace, Foundry, and Land Company. Resurrection of Decatur. How 
Andrew Calhoun Frey "started the town going." Summary of im- 
portant industries located at Decatur. 

THE Tennessee Company was reorganized in 1886, 
directly following the Alabama deal, and a new board 
of officers was elected. Colonel Enoch Ensley now 
became president of the company; T. T. Hillman, first vice- 
president; Colonel A. M. Shook, second vice-president; Nat 
Baxter, Jr., chairman of executive committee; James Bowron, 
secretary and treasurer; and young George B. McCormack, au- 
ditor. The main office remained, however, in Nashville, not 



A SERIES OF LIVELY INCIDENTS 1887 395 



being transferred to Birmingham until several years later, when 
the Aldrich and DeBardeleben properties were acquired. 

The first event of signal importance to the company, and to 
the industrial records of Alabama following the big trade, was 
the founding by Colonel Ensley of the city of Ensley. 

It was shortly after DeBardeleben's new-born project of Besse- 
mer had electrified the Birmingham District that Colonel Ensley 
succeeded in getting the Tennessee Company to convey to the 
Ensley Land Company (organized by Colonel Ensley) a tract 
of 4,000 acres of land, excluding the minerals. This was done 
by the Tennessee Company on account of the large interest in 
their securities personally owned by President Ensley. The land 
was rough and sterile, full of scrubby pines and blackjack. It 
lay high six miles due west of Birmingham, directly upon the 
borders of the Pratt Coal Field. One day, just after the convey- 
ance of the 4,000 acres, Colonel Ensley and Colonel Shook were 
walking through the piney woods about there. 

" Ensley turned to me," says Colonel Shook, " and he said, 
' Shook, I 'm going to build a town in these woods. Right where 
you are standing ; that ? s the center of it. I 'm going to build 
a town, Shook, that '11 be like a brindle cow suckling herself, and 
I 'm going to call that town Ensley/ We walked on further, 
and Ensley continued, ' I intend to fill this valley, from the foot 
of the chert ridge yonder to the Pratt Railroad, with manufac- 
turing plants. I 'm going to build four big blast furnaces and 
a steel plant. The whole of this chert ridge I '11 use for resi- 
dences, and the day the work is begun I '11 agree to pay $200 a 
foot for this corner lot, and here I will build the Bank of 
Ensley/ " 

The colonel once full of his idea, there was no holding him, 
and work on the building of the city of Ensley was then and there 
commenced. The following excerpts are from an article con- 
tributed by Colonel Shook to Crawford Perkins' " Industrial His- 
tory of Ensley " : 

"The Ensley Land Company was originally capitalized at 
$10,000,000, fifty-one per cent of which was retained by the Ten- 
nessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company, and the remaining 
forty-nine per cent offered to the Tennessee Coal and Iron stock- 
holders, in proportion to their respective holdings at ten cents on 
the dollar. As soon as this was done, the plan and scope was made 
public. This was that the proceeds of the sale of every lot should 



396 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



be used by the company in the development of the property, by 
establishing manufactures and aiding manufacturers who might 
be induced to come there. John H. Inman of New York, being 
the largest stockholder of the Tennessee Company, by reason of 
this fact became the largest stockholder of the Ensley Land Com- 
pany. He authorized Doak Mudd, a broker of Birmingham, to 
sell $100,000 of the Ensley Land Company stock. This was 
very soon after the organization and before any stock was issued 
or ready to issue. Mudd advertised that he would sell the stock 
at his office on a certain evening. When the time arrived, a 
great crowd assembled, wanting to buy the stock. My recollec- 
tion of the first sale was at sixty cents on the dollar, and in a 
few minutes $100,000 had been sold, some of it selling as high 
as ninety cents on the dollar, men tearing each others' clothes to 
get in and get the stock at this price. In a few days reaction 
set in, and the buyers began to realize that they had been precipi- 
tate and premature. People who had agreed to buy the stock 
were trying to sell it for less than they had paid for it, and in less 
than a month the stock had gone back to fifteen and twenty cents 
on the dollar. My recollection is that none of the parties who 
had agreed to buy the stock at this fabulous price were ever 
required to take and pay for it." 

The Jefferson County Record contains the following facts: 
" That the petition to incorporate the Ensley Land Company 
was filed December 7, 1886, by Enoch Ensley, Thomas D. Rad- 
cliffe, T. T. Hillman, and William A. Walker. That its purpose 
and nature were to buy and sell lands, survey and improve same, 
and lay off into streets, lots, parks, and alleys ; to construct gas, 
electric, and other illuminative works, and manufacture and sell 
products and results thereof; to construct pleasure resorts; to 
quarry stone; to manufacture pig iron, steel, and other articles 
which can be made with coal, coke, or other fuel, out of iron ore 
or metals, or from wood, stone, earth, cotton, iron, steel, either 
alone or in conjunction with any other material ; to buy, use, or 
sell same; to erect dwellings, stores, shops, and all machinery 
that may be necessary to carry on such business; to build and 
operate tramways; to carry on stores and necessary mercantile 
establishments; to construct and operate water works, and con- 
struct and maintain reservoirs, conduits, canals, and pipes. The 
capital stock of $10,000,000 was divided into $100 shares. The 
books of subscription were opened December 8 at the office of 
Hewitt, Walker, and Porter. The directors elected were E. 
Ensley, T. T. Hillman, W. N". Duncan, J. H. Inman, and Nat 
Baxter, Jr., while Thomas D. Radcliffe was elected secretary and 
treasurer, and Enoch Ensley president." 

Colonel Ensley had the tract of land surveyed, the whole place 
plotted and laid out, sewerage system installed, and a hotel 
started. He then fixed the day of sale and advertised the prop- 



A SERIES OF LIVELY INCIDENTS 1887 397 



erty far and wide, just as Colonel Powell had done with Bir- 
mingham. However, Colonel Ensley changed his mind about 
the sale day, deciding at the last minute to wait until his hotel 
was done. " Altogether," observes Colonel Shook, " more than 
a year was spent in doing preliminary work, and after the hotel 
had been finished and opened for more than twelve months, it 
was Colonel Ensley's boast that there was no other hotel in the 
world like it; that it had been open more than a year and had 
never taken in a dollar. Soon after this Colonel Ensley was 
called to the bedside of his sick wife, who was in Europe, and 
matters remained dormant until his return, as he would not 
agree for any one else to attempt to manage in his absence. After 
the death of Mrs. Ensley, Colonel Ensley came back to look after 
the Ensley Land Company, but things had changed. . . . 

" Again the sale of lots was advertised and postponed. The 
price of pig iron, which was and is our barometer, went down 
and continued to go down until it looked as if there was no 
bottom. . . . The Ensley Land Company had incurred a large 
debt, and had no way to pay it except by the sale of lots, and not 
a lot had been sold. Tired creditors became impatient, and the 
first judgment for $10,000 was obtained against the Ensley Land 
Company and others quickly followed. No lots were sold until 
the reorganization of the company, in 1898, after it had passed 
through all of its trials, receivership, and the entire property 
having been sold at sheriff's sale and bid in for $16,000 by the 
estate of James C. Warner of Nashville, Tennessee, who held 
a judgment against it for practically that amount." 

The property was afterwards acquired through others for the 
Ensley Land Company. 

Meanwhile, development work at the mines went on in a more 
or less haphazard style. The circumstances under which the 
Tennessee Company chanced to get its first Pennsylvania min- 
ing engineer about this time are even now frequently referred 
to. It came out of the introduction of an accounting system 
by Colonel Shook. During Colonel Ensley's absence abroad 
Colonel Shook traveled back and forth between Nashville and 
Birmingham, looking to the Alabama end of affairs. 

One afternoon at Pratt mines he was in the commissary where 
the mine supplies were also kept, and noticed that the superin- 
tendents, foremen, and all the various workmen, dropped in 
and helped themselves just about as they pleased. " D' ye mean 



398 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



to say," said Colonel Shook, going up to the clerk, "that no 
requisition for any of this stuff is ever made, — no account 
kept?" 

" Colonel Ensley don't require it, sir," replied the clerk. 

Now Colonel Shook had been in his younger days fairly 
reprehensible himself on this commissary proposition, but, on 
coming into Alabama, he had reformed. As was natural with 
a Tennesseean, the moment he reformed himself he was not easy 
in his mind until every other man had done the same. " Who- 
ever heard," said he, " of running a commissary like this ? " And 
he gave orders on the spot, reforming the situation. Now, as it 
happened, no sooner had the novel and . drastic measure been 
issued than the company's mining engineer, Llewellyn Johns, 
humming an old Welsh tune, sauntered gay and easy into the 
commissary. He helped himself, as was the custom, and took 
up a monkey wrench. "Here's for Laura," he cried, and, not 
stopping a note of his happy tune, started out. 

" Hey ! " cried the clerk, " put that monkey wrench down ! 
Colonel Shook has just issued an order that a requisition is to 
be made first at the office before anything is let out of here any 
more." 

Llewellyn J ohns stood stock still in his tracks. " It 's Colonel 
Sh — Shook's orders," stuttered the clerk. 

" Colonel Shook be d — d, then ! I keep this monkey wrench." 

At this juncture Colonel Shook spoke up : " Johns," said he, 
" you '11 have to write out an order to the local headquarters when 
you want anything after this, and every one else will. Too loose 
ends about here, and I've decided to change the system. You 
make out a written order stating that monkey wrench is for use 
for Laura Ensley Slope No. 1, and you'll have no trouble in 
getting it. We 've got to fix things so as some account can be 
kept of something around here some of the time." 

" So you begin on me and this monkey wrench," cried Johns. 
" You tell me, who has made these Pratt mines, to put in writing 
that I need a good-for-nothing monkey wrench, eh ? " . . . 

" If you want a tack or a match it 's got to be written down," 
declared the colonel conclusively. 

"I'll resign," cried the Welsh engineer, "before I do it." 
And resign he did without more ado. 

News of the fracas traveled fast to Nashville. Now, in those 
times, mining engineers were few and far between in Alabama. 



A SERIES OF LIVELY INCIDENTS 1887 399 



T. T. Hillman wrote up to Pennsylvania to J. K. Taggart, then 
manager of the Connellsville Coke and Iron Company plants in 
Pennsylvania, and asked him to suggest a man for them. Mr. 
Taggart replied as follows: 

Leisenring, Pa., March 9, 1887. 

Mr. T. T. Hillman, 

President Alice Furnace, Birmingham, Alabama. 

Dear Sir, — In your letter of 14th you asked me to suggest 
a man as superintendent and engineer for your mines. I heartily 
recommend Erskine Eamsay (Scotch) to fill the position, and al- 
though but twenty-two years of age, he is one of the best superin- 
tendents in the Coke region, and no man in the region is a better 
mining engineer. Erskine Eamsay is a son of Eobert Eamsay, 
superintendent of all of Frick Company's mines. Erskine Eam- 
say is a graduate of St. Vincent College, 1st in his class. Eobert 
Eamsay was superintendent of Shafton Coal Company, bought 
out by Westmoreland Coal Company, then superintendent for 
Carnegie Brothers, and when Carnegie and Frick merged their 
interests, became general mine superintendent of the H. C. Frick 
Coke Company. During this time Erskine was working for his 
father all the time, and under Frick Company was superintendent 
of the Moorewood mines, with its five hundred and seventy-one 
coke ovens. Erskine Eamsay, although but twenty-two, has had 
more practical experience than many superintendents much 
older, and all his life has been employed by some of the most 
progressive companies in the country. If you desire he will 
visit your place, and if you can arrive at a bargain, he is will- 
ing to go in on trial for any time you may name. I know his 
employers would be very loth to dispense with his services, yet, 
yours being a new country and to be built up, he is anxious 
to take the chances. Kindly let me know your views in the 
matter. 

Yours truly, 
(Signed) J. K. Taggart, S. & E. 

On receipt of this letter Mr. Hillman telegraphed Mr. Tag- 
gart, asking that the young engineer come on for a conference, 
and, by a later wire, to stop over in Nashville en route to Bir- 
mingham, to confer with the Tennessee Company officers. 

Mr. Eamsay says in this connection: "I left Pittsburg on 
March 31 to look over the situation and see if I wanted the place 
and they wanted me. At that time I J d never been outside the 
State of Pennsylvania, and I recollect it was the first time in 
my life I'd been aboard a Pullman car. I guess I was pretty 
green, and they all put me through a sort of a civil service 



400 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



examination there in Nashville, — Baxter, Hillman, Shook, Bow- 
ron, and McCormack, too/ 5 

As a matter of fact, the Tennessee Company officials at the 
Nashville office quizzed the young Scotch engineer unmercifully. 
He gave an account of his work, minute and precise. He 
had had, indeed, an extraordinary amount of practical ex- 
perience for a young man of his age. When his recital was 
over the men in the office looked at one another and then they 
looked at him. "How old did you say you are, sir?" asked 
Colonel Shook. 

Erskine Ramsay replied briefly, with the date of his birth. 

" I figure out that makes you twenty-two years old, then," 
observed Mr. Bowron. 

" What I 'm figuring on," broke in President Nat Baxter, Jr., 
" is if you 've done all that you say, where 'd any time come in 
for you to go to school ? " 

" Maybe," interposed Mr. Hillman, " maybe he did n't really 
go to school ! " 

" Yes," Mr. Ramsay declares he said at the time, " yes, I did ! " 
At any rate, the young Scotch engineer was fortunate in getting 
away from that office with his scalp-lock intact. He says to-day : 
" That was, for a fact, the most trying ordeal I ever went through 
in my life, and I was glad enough to take the next train for 
Birmingham and the Pratt mines." 

At Pratt mines the superintendent, Colonel Charles Pollard 
Ball, and the Welsh engineer, Llewellyn Johns, who had by this 
time signed his contract with the DeBardeleben Coal and Iron 
Company, met young Erskine Ramsay, and showed him over 
the mines. After spending about a week, Mr. Ramsay returned 
to Pennsylvania, " not much in the notion of going to Alabama." 
He had an interview with Henry Clay Frick, in which Mr. Frick 
said : " Take the place, Erskine. They offer you more than we 
can pay you at this time, but if you don't like the place come 
back, and we will always have something for you to do." He 
decided to accept the position, and returned to Birmingham to 
take charge April 15, 1887, as mine superintendent and engi- 
neer of the Pratt mines of the Tennessee Company. 

Erskine Ramsay was born September 24, 1864, at Six Mile 
Ferry, a little coal mining suburb of Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, 
bordering the Monongahela River, which is now the lower end 
of the town Homestead. His father was Robert Ramsay, chief 



A SERIES OF LIVELY INCIDENTS 1887 401 



among the great mining engineers of Pennsylvania, and his 
mother was Janet Erskine. 

There are in the records of both the Erskine and the Ramsay 
families certain qualities of much interest. Their history has 
root in the pioneer coal mines of Scotland. For over two hun- 
dred years their names were associated in workman's capacity 
with the Scotch coal industry. There was an Erskine identified 
with the iron industry of the American colonies who also came 
from Dunfermline, and who worked in New J ersey several years, 
becoming the first surveyor-general and geographer-in-chief of 
the Continental Army. For the past half century the name of 
Ramsay has been associated with the upbuilding of the coal in- 
dustry of Pennsylvania. In fact, up in the Connellsville region, 
where for so many years one Ramsay successively followed an- 
other in the management of the Southwest Coal and Coke Com- 
pany, they are frequently referred, to as " The Royal Family." 

Erskine Ramsay's grandfather had been a coal miner all his 
life, practically, having started in the mines when a boy. Before 
emigrating to America he sank several shafts in coal mines of 
Scotland. He settled permanently in Pennsylvania on his sec- 
ond trip in 1862, at Larimer, Westmoreland County, where he 
accumulated a moderate amount of property. He died there in 
the year 1885, well regarded for his sterling qualities and rugged 
honesty. His four boys, Robert, William, Morris, and George, 
and their sons, take high place in the industrial progress of the 
State of Pennsylvania. 

As it may be but holding a candle to daylight, as Scott's say- 
ing goes, to observe, the turn for mining and mechanical engi- 
neering was native-born in Erskine Ramsay. And not only was 
it a matter of inheritance ; it was fostered by every condition of 
association and environment. Erskine Ramsay's mother relates 
an incident how, " when no more than some three years old, 
Erskine sank a tiny shaft in the front yard, devised a cage and 
a little tipple, and got out his coal." 

The Ramsay family left Six Mile Ferry in 1865 and moved 
to Shafton, Westmoreland County, where the boy was entered 
in the public schools of that community. This mining county 
was one of the earliest coal mining centers of western Pennsyl- 
vania, and produces more coal to-day than any other county in 
the United States, and approximately twice as much as the en- 
tire State of Alabama. Shafton is a small mining town on the 

26 



402 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



main line of the Pennsylvania Railroad, twenty-two miles east 
of Pittsburg. 1 

Robert Ramsay was a great believer in keeping his boys at 
work when there was no school. He used to take his little son 
Erskine with him whenever he had surveying in the mines or 
on the outside to do. His brother, Morris, one of the early mine 
bosses at Shafton, also made a habit of taking Erskine with him 
when on his rounds through the mines. Before the boy was ten 
years old he had a certain amount of knowledge of the work, and 
a deep-seated desire to learn more. 

When he was no more than eleven or twelve years old he 
began to work in the coal mines at Shafton: first in the com- 
pany's car shops, blacksmith shops, and machine shops; then 
he fired the boilers, ran the shaft-hoisting machine and the mine 
pumps; served as weighman on the tipple; looked after the 
shipments of coal ; kept the pay roll and ran a co-operative store, 
two and a half years, up to 1881. He rarely took a holiday, and 
during the noon hour each day for several years his Uncle Morris 
would coach him in mathematics and other studies. He went 
to day school during his last year at Shafton. " Every morning 
at five o'clock," he says, "I was called to go to work in the 
machine shop. It was lathe work generally, and I would stop in 
time to get breakfast, and then go to school. I would earn twenty- 
five to thirty dollars a month. At that time night schools were 
quite common, and when working at any job about the mines, 
I had usually been to some one of them; so, regardless of 
whether I was working at the mines or not, I was generally en- 
gaged in some line of study. During one of the terms at the 
Shafton School, I recall, I had the job of janitor for our room, 
at two dollars per month." 

In 1881 the boy worked in the office of the Carnegie Com- 
pany's Monastery Mines and Coke Works, of which his father 
had charge. He kept the pay roll, checked bills, and served as 

1 One of the first mines in western Pennsylvania was located here ; the 
shaft mine of the Shafton Coal Company, a concern owned in Philadelphia. 
Irwin, the largest town in that part of Westmoreland County, was the 
center of the celebrated Irwin Gas Coal field. The mines here were opened 
immediately after the completion of the Pennsylvania Railroad to Pitts- 
burg, in the eighteen-fifties, by Tom Scott, one time president of the 
Pennsylvania Railroad. In the early days of these mines the slack pro- 
duced was a drug on the market. One of Andrew Carnegie's first indus- 
trial enterprises was the erection of the Larimer Coke Works to utilize 
this slack, which he bought from the nearby mines at a low price. The 
coke was used for years at the Carnegie Lucy Furnaces at Pittsburg. 



A SERIES OF LIVELY INCIDENTS 1887 403 



cashier. He then became assistant machinist and master me- 
chanic, having in charge all the machinery in and about the 
Monastery mines ; the boilers, hoisting, and stationary engines, 
pumps, coal crushers, and coal washers. At the same time he 
accomplished his college work. He entered the Benedictine Col- 
lege of Westmoreland, St. Vincent College, and graduated first 
in his class, June 27, 1883. Then began his genuine professional 
career; for it was in this year he became superintendent of the 
Frick Company's Monastery Mines and Coke Works. And he 
stayed right with his job, close as a fire department man to his 
engines and wagons. He slept in a room which he had fitted up 
adjoining his ofiice. He watched his ovens closely to see that 
they were charged with every pound of coal they would coke. 
As a result, the ovens produced one month an average 4.06 tons 
of coke per oven drawn. When these figures were gotten up in 
the city ofiice (Pittsburg) Mr. Frick said there was some mis- 
take and ordered them gone over again. They were found to 
be correct. The next month the output was even better, running 
up to 4.17 tons. Never before had any Frick oven produced as 
much as four tons of coke. 

During the time young Eamsay was superintendent of this 
plant, which comprised two hundred and eight ovens, he also did 
at night and at odd times all of the surveying and engineering 
needed and kept up the mine maps. He was the youngest super- 
intendent the Pennsylvania coke region had ever had up to that 
time, or has had since. The plant was remotely located from 
the general ofiice and the other works, and, as a result, the young 
man was, to a great extent, thrown on his own resources. His 
life was isolated. The world was to him a series of coal mines; 
the entire horizon stubborned with batteries of coke ovens. In 
the early part of 1885 Mr. Frick suggested to Erskine's father 
that the young man be put in charge of the Morewood Coke 
Company, Limited, as general superintendent. Personally, the 
boy was not in favor of the change, as Morewood was one of 
the largest propositions in the coke region, and he feared to 
take on such additional responsibilities. However, Henry Clay 
Frick thought otherwise, and on February 4, 1885, Erskine 
Eamsay became general superintendent of the Morewood Com- 
pany. Mr. Frick was then president and owned a part of the 
total capital stock, the remainder being owned by constituent 
companies of the later organized Illinois Steel Company. 



404 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



When Emmet A. Upstill resigned as superintendent of the 
Southwest Coal Company at Tarr, Pennsylvania, Ramsay was 
put in charge of its properties in addition to the Morewood 
Company. Sometime afterwards the Red Top mines near Tarr 
were purchased from S. Dillinger and Sons, and these were also 
included under Ramsay's charge. Then the Morewood and 
Southwest companies and the Dillinger Works were consolidated 
under the name of the Southwest Coal and Coke Company, with 
Ramsay in general charge, reporting direct to Mr. Frick. 

During the time he was in charge of this Southwest Company 
Mr. Carnegie and Mr. Frick were coming out from the Pitts- 
burg office one evening en route to the East End. As they got 
off the Pennsylvania Railroad train at East Liberty, Mr. Carnegie, 
seeing a train of coke standing nearby, remarked on the beauty 
of the coke and the trimness of the way it was loaded. Mr. 
Frick offered to bet it was Frick coke, and, on climbing across the 
car to find the tag, discovered it was from " Morewood," one of 
the Southwest works. Erskine Ramsay had made quite a reputa- 
tion on the good coke shipped from the Southwest works. He 
was so careful in loading it that some wag in the region remarked 
that he " whitewashed 99 it. 

In October, 1886, Erskine Ramsay became assistant engineer 
for the H. C. Frick Coke Company. It was here that he had 
charge, under his father, of the construction of the celebrated 
Standard plant at Mt. Pleasant. Directly after its completion 
he entered the Alabama field. 

When, in 1889, Andrew Carnegie paid his first visit to the 
Birmingham District, he wrote to Robert Ramsay, whom he had 
known as a boy in old Dunfermline : " I was very glad to meet 
your son Erskine in the South. He is going to be ' a credit to 
us a'." 

During the fifteen years that Erskine Ramsay worked for the 
Tennessee Company he introduced improvements covering a 
wide range. His first step in the spring of 1887 was to organize 
the first engineering corps of the Tennessee Coal, Iron, and 
Railroad Company, and to make maps of the underground 
workings. 

"Erskine Ramsay was a worker all right," one of the old 
furnacemen remarked ; " there was n't a square inch of old Pratt 
he didn't carry his transit over. With pants up to his knees, 
down into the mines he 'd go, and get just as dirty as the rest 



A SERIES OF LIVELY INCIDENTS 1887 405 



of us, — and dirtier, — though you would n't think it to see 
him nowadays in his patent leathers and all." 

In the old days, owing to the lack of maps, the workings were 
not driven with much regularity and no pillars were drawn. 
The general condition of the plants was brought up gradually 
to a satisfactory state. Pillars were drawn systematically and 
the maximum amount of coal recovered. Shaking screens were 
installed and much of the output was put on the market as 
lump. The slack was washed and a coke produced much supe- 
rior to the old article. The first coal washer at Pratt mines was 
erected at Shaft No. 1 in 1892. It was of the regular Eobinson 
type, having a capacity of four hundred tons in ten hours. This 
washer was an English type and was brought to this country by 
Colonel Shook and Captain Chamberlain. The second plant at 
Pratt was built at Slope No. 2, with a capacity of six hundred 
tons in ten hours, and in its erection Mr. Eamsay introduced a 
number of improvements and additions on which he took out 
patents. This improved washer, which came to be known as the 
Ramsay-Robinson, proved to be a success and was peculiarly 
adapted to the Pratt coal. It may be said that to the successful 
washing of the Pratt coal, with the regular production of a 
superior grade of coke, was due much of the success met with 
later in the district in the production of basic pig iron, which 
made possible the manufacture of basic open-hearth steel. A 
great many of these washers were erected in Alabama, and most 
of them are running successfully to-day. The output of the old 
mines was in most cases increased and new mines were being 
acquired, — generally through consolidation with other com- 
panies, — and new ones opened. 

The red ore mines of the Tennessee Company were at that 
period being worked under contract by Thomas Worthington, 
who was long associated in railroad construction work with 
Aldrich and DeBardeleben. It was Mr. Worthington who in- 
stalled in 1895, at Spring Gap, the first skip-car or "gunboat" 
on Red Mountain. Erskine Ramsay designed and patented the 
revolvable dump employed for several years at the Smythe mine, 
one of the Ishcooda group. Speaking of the old days Mr. Ram- 
say said : " The Tennessee Company, as a rule, was short of cash, 
so the opening of new mines, rebuilding others, and addition of 
equipment was no easy matter, and to-day it is amusing to look 
back at some of the makeshifts which had to be resorted to. In 



406 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



one case, for instance, I remember we bought a pair of discarded 
Corliss engines from an old Mississippi cotton mill, ran them 
through the (Linn Iron Works) shops, adding rope wheels. 
One of them still furnishes the power for an overhead, endless- 
rope haulage two and one-half miles long and delivers one thou- 
sand tons daily to the tipple. Second-hand boilers would also 
sometimes be bought; not that it was thought best to buy old 
ones, but for the reason that we did not have the money to get 
new ones." 

The improvements Ramsay introduced, all told, covered a wide 
range, taking in the plan of the mine workings, the ventilations, 
— introducing the split system, — the tracks, and mechanical 
haulages; the style of mine cars and wheels, the plan of tipples, 
and, as mentioned, improved screens and washers. 

At the time Mr. Ramsay assumed charge of the engineering 
end of Pratt mines, which were the only coal properties in Ala- 
bama owned by the Tennessee Coal Company, the daily output 
averaged from two thousand to twenty-five hundred tons. The 
annual output thus amounted to about six hundred thousand tons. 
One decade later the mines were producing, under the adminis- 
tration of Ramsay and McCormack, two and a third million tons 
annually. 

On November 16, 1894, Erskine Ramsay received the following 
note from Mr. Baxter, president of the Tennessee Company : 

Nashville, Tenn., Nov. 16, 1894. 

Erskine Ramsay, Esq., 

Superintendent Pratt Mines. 

My dear Sir, — I hereby appoint you chief mining engineer 
of the company's property in Alabama, and vest you with the 
responsibility and charge of the technical management of the 
company's collieries and ore mines in that State, feeling confi- 
dence in the wise management of the trust reposed in you, and 
being assured that you will work in perfect harmony in its ad- 
ministration with Mr. McCormack, assistant general manager, 
whom I have also notified of your appointment. 

Yours truly, 
(Signed) N. Baxter, Jr., President. 

In addition to this newly-created position of chief engineer, 
Mr. Ramsay continued to fill his other two positions of mining 
engineer of the Pratt mines division and superintendent of the 
Pratt mines division until his appointment in November of 1895 



A SERIES OF LIVELY INCIDENTS 1887 407 



by Mr. McCormack, in addition to chief engineer, as assistant to 
the general manager, with special charge of the Linn Iron Works 
department. 

About the time of Mr. Ramsay's entrance into Alabama, and 
just a short while prior to the building of the Ensley furnaces, 
the International Association of Metallurgists and Mineralogists 
met in Birmingham. There were delegates not only from the 
various States, but also from England, France, Germany, and 
other foreign countries. An interesting event in the iron world 
eventually resulted from this meeting. Among the visitors was 
one James Henderson. This Mr. Henderson, it seems, had worked 
with the famous gun manufacturer, Krupp. 

" He was a great traveler, a discoverer, and an inventor/' says 
Colonel J. W. Bush of Birmingham, who was a member of the 
reception committee. " He owned a patent process for the manu- 
facture of steel in the open hearth. It was generally supposed 
that steel could not be made from the grade of iron manufac- 
tured in the Birmingham District. Indeed, a member of the 
International Association, who was from Pittsburg, jokingly re- 
marked that our iron contained so many impurities and was so 
brittle that it had to be shipped on sawdust to prevent its being 
broken. After several days' conversation with Mr. Henderson, 
I became thoroughly convinced that the manufacture of steel, 
the natural sequence of iron making, could be accomplished in 
Birmingham." 

A few weeks after the departure of the visitors, Colonel Bush, 
G. W. West, John McCoy, Henry F. Wilson, and Colonel J. A. 
Montgomery took active measures and organized a company to 
demonstrate the Henderson process. Colonel Bush, the presi- 
dent of this company, a lawyer by profession, a Virginian by 
birth, was a graduate of William and Mary College. He had 
served with distinction in the Confederate army, first, as a mem- 
ber of Lee's rangers, then in the Ninth Cavalry as courier for 
General Lee. After the war he taught school and studied law. 
He settled in Alabama in the eighteen-sixties, and married Miss 
Sallie H. Evans of Mobile, a sister of the Southern author, 
Augusta Evans Wilson. After representing the Seventeenth 
District several years in the State Senate, Colonel Bush moved 
to Birmingham to practice law, early in the eighties. His 
account of the operations of the Henderson Company is as 
follows : 



408 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



" In March, 1888, our furnace was completed, and charged with 
scrap iron, white or mottled iron, fluorspar, chrome ore, lime, 
etc. The heat produced in the furnace was from a gas producer, 
and was intensified to about 4500 degrees Fahrenheit. By and 
through the intensity of the heat the impurities of the iron be- 
came volatilized, and while in this condition passed off with the 
fumes in about the following order: the metal would be decar- 
bonized, desulphurized, disiliconized, and lastly, dephosphorized. 
Phosphorus having the strongest affinity for the iron would 
remain longest, and if the molten metal was not poured at the 
proper time, whatever remained in the furnace would return 
into the iron. Henderson called this the flame process. After 
many tedious delays the furnace was fired, and in three hours and 
forty minutes the first ton of Alabama steel was molded into 
ingots on the 8th day of March, 1888. 

When this ton of steel was made, the stock of the company 
soared skyward; 1200. for 100 was given in some instances. While 
we had steel we had no furnace left. Our furnace lining was of 
fire brick and dolomite, and the heat was so intense that the 
lining and brick fused and went out with the steel. In our en- 
thusiasm we overlooked this important difficulty, and proceeded 
at once to organize another and larger company. The first com- 
pany was known as the Henderson Steel and Manufacturing 
Company, and its directors were H. F. Wilson, J. A. Montgom- 
ery, Geddery, Dr. Vann, John McCoy, and myself. The 

second company was named the Henderson Steel Company, and 
the board of directors comprised Colonel J. A. Montgomery, L. A. 
Rogan, treasurer; H. F. Wilson, secretary; Charles G. Brown, 
Dr. J. C. Abernathy, C. F. Enslen, Mr. Geddery, Fred Sloss, and 
W. H. Hassinger." 

A large piece of the Henderson steel was sent to a razor manu- 
facturer in Georgia, who returned a gross of razors and a carving 
knife and fork made from it. The press throughout the country 
took up the matter. The following letters from United States 
Senator James V. Pugh to John Colley Rowlett were published : 

" The specimen of the first production of steel from Alabama 
ores, by the Henderson process, is simply wonderful. As far as 
I am able to judge and according to the judgment of all to 
whom I have shown the specimens, it must be of the best quality 
and will stand the severest tests. It will take some time to satisfy 
the country that such steel as this is claimed to be, can be pro- 
duced from such ores under any process, but the truth will cer- 
tainly be ascertained by tests that I am informed will be made, 
and if the experiments prove successful there can be no doubt 
that an immediate revolution will follow in the production of 
steel. 



A SERIES OF LIVELY INCIDENTS 1887 409 



"The consequence of these discoveries upon the future of 
Alabama cannot be foreseen or exaggerated. The simple state- 
ment of the fact that the supremacy of Alabama in iron and 
steel making is known and accepted would make her growth, 
wealth, and prosperity fabulous." 

The Atlanta Constitution, having been shown the razor, made 
the following statement : 

" Mr. M. H. Patty called at our office yesterday and opening 
a plain razor case took out a double concave blade and presented 
it to us. There was not much in that, and yet there is something 
very important back of it. The razor was made of Birmingham 
steel, the first steel ever made in Alabama. The steel is worked 
from the common iron ores of the Birmingham District by the 
Henderson process. His process is mainly, we believe, an ad- 
justment of the chimney draughts, by which the phosphorus is 
consumed. 

" The stock of the company which controls this patent has 
risen from $200 to $1,000 per share. Mr. Vittur, who made the 
razor, declares that the steel is the best American steel he has 
yet tested, and that it may obviate the necessity of his import- 
ing foreign steel, which he is now compelled to do. 

" A double concave razor made in Atlanta out of Birmingham 
steel is an accomplishment of what ten years ago would have 
been considered a foolish boast. The South is moving." 1 

Following this first experiment, preparations were made with 
great vigor by the company for the manufacture of steel on a 
commercial scale. A new plant was started near the original 
ore in Village Creek. Colonel Bush writes: "In the mean- 
time the stock of this company was being bought and sold at 
fabulous prices. While holding a directors' meeting, someone 
asked 'how are we going to line the converters?' The ques- 
tion came very near producing consternation. Fire brick and 
dolomite would not answer; we had tried them. In the crucial 
test they had melted like lead. It was very questionable whether 

1 An interesting item relating to Alabama steel history is, that in the 
year 1 867 a few specimens of Shelby iron were sent to the Troy iron works 
in New York to be tried for the Bessemer process. According to the 
Alabama Manual and Statistical Register of 1869, a series of experiments 
was then being tried by Mr. Holly with grades of iron from various sections 
of the United States. "The steel made from the Alabama [Shelby] iron 
was," it is stated, "pronounced by Messrs. Winslow, Griswold, and Holly 
as equal to the best iron they had tested." A specimen forwarded to the 
Paris exposition " was pronounced to be superior to any yet obtained [in 
the eighteen-sixties] in America." It must also be recalled that Horace 
Ware demonstrated the quality of Shelby iron for steel making many 
years before the Bessemer process was invented, but the results of his 
action were never widely known, and not even known in the Birmingham 
District until the present time. 



410 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



there was anything that would stand the intense heat produced 
under this flame process. A committee of five was appointed 
with the suggestion that each member should open correspondence 
with scientific men everywhere in the world. Within a few 
weeks G. W. West received a letter from a man in Trenton, 
New Jersey, who told us of a material called magnesite, obtain- 
able only in Syria. In his letter he stated that some man in 
Trenton had about seven hundred pounds that we could buy. 
We bought it by wire. We also gave an order for the importa- 
tion of several tons. When the magnesite arrived we were ready 
to start the second furnace. No directions came as to how to 
use the magnesite. It would not mix with either oil or water; 
it would not stick to anything, and, sure enough, we were in a 
quandary, and our patience well-nigh exhausted. We wired to 
our friend in Trenton, and he wired back, i Hammer it in ! ' 

" We hammered it in, and that same hearth of magnesite stood 
the manufacture of eighteen hundred tons of as good steel as was 
ever made in the United States. Its quality was unsurpassed; 
boiler plate, railroad iron, cutlery, razors, etc., were made from 
it, and yet many of our good people were skeptical." 

In July, 1890, the Henderson furnace was turned over to a 
committee from the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce with 
the idea that its operations might be expanded and iron-masters 
of the district be induced to take more interest in steel manufac- 
ture. This committee comprised A. B. Johnston, then president 
of the Chamber of Commerce; W. H. Hassinger, manager Ala- 
bama rolling mills, Gate City; G. L. Luetscher, chemist of the 
Tennessee Company; P. L. Leeds, superintendent machinery, 
Louisville and Nashville Railroad Company, and H. R. J ohnston. 
In this same year the members of the British Iron and Steel In- 
stitute visited Birmingham, Sir Lowthian Bell again among 
them, also Mr. Percy Gilchrist, the inventor of the basic open- 
hearth process. Henry F. Wilson of Birmingham says : " When 
Mr. Gilchrist inspected the Henderson furnace at North Bir- 
mingham, he said, ' My God, gentlemen, why have you not forty 
of these instead of one ? ' " 

Notwithstanding a favorable report of the committee from 
the Chamber of Commerce, the necessary capital could not be 
raised to enlarge and improve the Henderson plant. It was 
recognized as a mechanical success, but owing to the high cost 
of manufacture and the lack of basic iron, it failed commercially. 



1. Modern Brown Ore Mines, Tuskaloosa County, T. C. I. 

2. Old Brown Ore Mines of Woodstock Company, Calhoun County 

3. First Open Hearth Furnace in Birmingham District 

The Henderson Steel Company, 1887 



A SERIES OF LIVELY INCIDENTS 1887 411 



In 1892 the abandoned plant was leased by the Tennessee Com- 
pany for the purpose of continuing experiments. In 1906 it was 
bought by Messrs. McCormack, Ramsay, and Lehman, when it 
was dismantled and the material sold as scrap. 

To return again to the spring of 1887, this was the date of the 
construction of the famous Ensley furnaces known as " the Big 
Four/' Construction on two of the contemplated groups of blast 
furnaces at Bessemer was then under way and was considered 
a big undertaking. Then the news was given out that the Ten- 
nessee Company intended to build four more furnaces all at 
once ! Colonel Ensley himself selected the location. He chose 
the long strip of land on the western rise of the city of Ensley, 
directly adjoining Pratt mines, and decided to place the furnaces 
so far from Village Creek that there would be plenty of room 
for a steel mill eventually between the furnaces and the creek, 
not realizing that all that space, and more too, would be required 
for furnace slag. 

Not only had the work of building four furnaces at one time 
never then been attempted in the Birmingham District; it had 
never been done in the United States. " It was/' Colonel Shook 
says, " a greater task than any of us ever realized. Up to 
that time no one had ever attempted to build a plant of such 
proportions all at once. An order for twelve large blowing en- 
gines was placed with the Weimer Engine and Machine Company 
of Lebanon, Pennsylvania, which was commented on by all the 
Trade Journals as being the largest order ever placed in this or 
any other country for blowing engines at one time. The first 
furnace was completed and ready to be lighted on Thursday, the 
11th day of April, 1888, and was blown in and started by Ered 
Gordon, then a great blast furnace expert and a member of the 
firm of Witherow and Gordon, under the direction of Colonel 
Ensley, who was watching with intense interest the starting of 
the furnace. It happened that the preparations for the lighting 
of the furnace delayed the time of blowing in from noon Thurs- 
day until nearly midnight Thursday night. Watching the clock 
at ten minutes to twelve Thursday night, Colonel Ensley said, 
6 Unless you light this furnace in less than ten minutes you can- 
not light it until Saturday, as I will not agree to light it on 
Friday.' The second and third furnaces (both of which were 
constructed by T. T. Hill man) were blown in during the year 
1888, and the fourth and last on the 29th day of April, 1889." 



412 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



Shortly after the last one of the Big Four was blown in, 
Colonel Ensley resigned from the presidency of the Tennessee 
Company, sold out every dollar of his interest in the Birming- 
ham District, and went off to pioneer in new fields. His town 
boom scheme — " the great city of Ensley " — had vanished like 
a bubble in so far as profit to him or to any one else at that pre- 
cise period was concerned. The way had been blazed — that was 
all. Yet that was something. Certain of Enoch Ensley's great 
dreams are beginning only to-day to be realized. Energetic, in- 
defatigable, the Tennessee colonel went up into the Sheffield Dis- 
trict, into the rich and unknown counties of the Highland Rim. 

For some time previous to his resignation from the Tennessee 
Company he had employed Billy Goold and Llewellyn Johns as 
his two " scouts," to prospect through Colbert and Franklin 
counties and buy up in his name a large acreage of coal and ore 
lands. By the summer of 1889 he owned another big estate of 
mineral lands, and went into partnership in this year with a 
friend, an enterprising young coal operator named Walter Moore. 

Mr. Moore, who is an Alabamian born and bred in Jefferson 
County > had then been in the coal business only three years. 
Those three years, however, had been crowded with activity. The 
Stockton mines, which he and his former associate, T. H. Friel, 
had operated, he sold to the Tennessee Company, and then or- 
ganized and operated the Horse Creek Coal and Coke Company 
(Dora) and the Magellan Coal Company. After joining Colonel 
Ensley, Mr. Moore merged all of his coal properties with the 
colonel's new ore and coal lands, and early in 1891 the Lady 
Ensley Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company was formed, with 
Colonel Ensley as president and Mr. Moore as vice-president and 
general manager. Two blast furnaces were begun in Sheffield, 
and a great scheme of development was inaugurated for that 
region. 

Colonel Ensley did not live to see his big Sheffield enterprises 
come to fruit. Within the very year the Lady Ensley Company 
was formed he died. Two years later Mr. Moore sold out these 
properties which, together with the two blast furnaces built by 
Colonel Ensley, the Hattie and Lady Ensley, are in 1909 prop- 
erty of the Sloss-Sheffield Iron and Steel Company. In 1893 
Mr. Moore organized the Ivy Coal and Iron Company. He cap- 
tained this concern until 1904, when it was absorbed in the Pratt 
Consolidated Coal Company, after which event Mr. Moore or- 



A SERIES OF LIVELY INCIDENTS 1887 413 



ganized the Eed Star Coal Company, of which he is president in 
1909. 

The development of all this northwestern region of the State 
where Ensley and Moore located and where the towns of Shef- 
field, Florence, Tuscumbia, and Decatur are situated was of slower 
growth than that of either Birmingham or Anniston. The period 
of reconstruction and of greatest activity here was during the 
late eighteen-eighties. Although the counties of the Tennessee 
Valley, among them Lauderdale, Colbert, Franklin, Lawrence, 
and Morgan, were with Madison among the earliest settled in 
the history of the State, and although the first blast furnace of 
Alabama was located in this region (in the county of Franklin), 
yet the iron industry secured no permanent foothold here until 
the city of Sheffield sprang into existence. 

The site upon which Sheffield was founded had been regarded 
since early in the nineteenth century as a superb location for a 
city. As far back as 1820, in fact, the high limestone bluff at 
this midway point between Florence and Tuscumbia was named 
York's Bluff, and the town of York was mapped out on the 
plateau there. It did not get beyond the paper stage until the 
year 1883, when "there was made," according to the historian 
William Garrott Brown, " the first impression that bore fruit." 

Just as the early chapters in the history of Birmingham, An- 
niston, Gadsden, and other towns are practically the history of 
the activities of a few enterprising men, so with Sheffield. Enoch 
Ensley, Walter Moore, Horace Ware, Alfred H. Moses, and 
Walter S. Gordon were chief among the first promoters of this 
big mining center of the Northern District. 

Captain Moses and Colonel Gordon were the founders of 
Sheffield. Alfred Moses was born September 16, 1840, in Charles- 
ton, South Carolina. He was graduated from the Charleston 
school and took up the study of law. During the war he was 
appointed to serve in clerical capacity in the circuit court of 
the Middle District of Alabama, and shortly after the war en- 
gaged in the real estate business in Montgomery. He attended 
the Louisville exposition, and on his return stopped off at Flor- 
ence to look into a railroad project. "While there," writes 
William Garrott Brown, "he was persuaded to undertake an 
excursion to the mineral lands of Franklin County, on which 
journey he passed over the rolling plateau which lay across the 
river, almost directly opposite Florence. He was struck with the 



414 THE STORY OF COAL AND IKON IN ALABAMA 



beauties and adaptability of the site, and on his return entered 
into negotiations with Colonel Walter S. Gordon, one of his 
companions on the trip, by which they became joint owners of 
a property then estimated at a few thousands of dollars, and now 
requiring millions to purchase. This was the beginning. The 
attention of various business men throughout the South, espe- 
cially in the States of Georgia and Alabama, had already been 
thoroughly aroused by the wonderful history of Birmingham and 
had been for some time directed to the Tennessee Valley. It 
was not a difficult task to make Sheffield the special object of 
their inquiries. When this was once accomplished, the natural 
attractions and advantages of the location did the rest. A body 
of these men guided by Moses and Gordon came together, organ- 
ized, and made purchases. They secured over two thousand acres 
of land, to be used as a site for the projected city, at a cost of 
$50,000. At the same time they acquired mineral rights on thirty 
thousand acres of coal and iron lands in Franklin, Winston, and 
Walker counties, paying out in all about one hundred thousand 
dollars. A corporation was then formed, under the name of the 
Sheffield Land, Iron, and Coal Company, with a capital stock 
of $500,000, afterward increased to $1,000,000. Of this com- 
pany the directors were Alfred H. Moses, David Clopton, O. O. 
Nelson, and W. S. Chambers of Montgomery, Alabama; W. S. 
Gordon, F. M. Coker, F. F. Burk, H. B. Tompkins, D. M. Bain, 
C. A. Collier, and W. A. Hemphill of Atlanta, Georgia; and 

E. C. Gordon of Clarksville, Tennessee. W. S. Gordon was made 
president, A. H. Moses vice-president and general manager, and 

F. M. Coker secretary and treasurer." 

The facts that Sheffield served as the natural outlet at the 
North for the Warrior coal field and vast brown ore tracts of the 
mineral belt, and combined just as Birmingham did all of the 
materials for manufacturing pig iron on a cheap and profitable 
basis, and had, in addition, facilities for water transportation, 
were advantages that spoke for themselves. But as soon as 
the boom was precipitated the curtain dropped upon the melo- 
dramatic first sale of lots, and the young town sank into 
oblivion for a space, becoming to all appearances another " town 
of York." 

Not one day in the dull period that followed, however, did 
Captain Moses and Colonel Gordon abandon faith in the place. 
That railroads should be brought there and iron making started 



A SERIES OF LIVELY INCIDENTS 1887 415 



were the ends upon which the Sheffield Land, Iron, and Coal 
Company now concentrated every effort. The Sheffield Furnace 
Company was accordingly organized in the summer of 1886, with 
a capital of $125,000, and construction work was started on a 
one hundred and twenty-five ton blast furnace. 

In 1887 the Alabama and Tennessee Iron and Coal Company 
(officered by Colonel E. W. Cole of Nashville), with a capital 
of $2,200,000, was induced to make Sheffield central headquar- 
ters, and let contracts for three one hundred and fifty ton blast 
furnaces. In 1889 came Enoch Ensley and Walter Moore and 
their associates. The construction of the first Lady Ensley Fur- 
nace Company furnace made the fifth blast furnace of this local- 
ity. The furnaces brought in other industries. Horace Ware, 
founder of Shelby Iron Works, had been from the beginning a 
great believer in Sheffield. An interview in The Atlanta Con- 
stitution quotes Mr. Ware as follows : 

"... I went into the first furnace company organized in 
Sheffield because I knew that there would never come a time when 
Sheffield could not dispose of her product. Now this statement 
brings me back to my story. Years ago I had projected the es- 
tablishment of furnaces a little to the south of this very spot on 
the Tennessee Eiver. I got sick and my plan was delayed. When 
I recovered it was to find that others had anticipated me, and 
that Sheffield was the result. Instead of getting mad and throw- 
ing away a good thing, I attended the first sale here in 1884, 
intending to purchase one hundred lots, but the prices went so 
far beyond my standard that I refused to bid, yet I have since 
bought these same lots at a big advance on these very prices. 
That showed my faith. On one of these lots I am going to build 
a solid granite square six stories high. I live in Birmingham, 
and will therefore briefly contrast the two places. Sheffield can 
make the iron itself as cheap as they can at Birmingham, of as 
good quality, and probably better. Sheffield is further from the 
coal and ore than Birmingham, but she can make a ton of iron 
with less ore and less coke, and thus overcome the difference by 
twenty per cent less cost. 

" Then we have the advantage of the river, which simply dis- 
tances any advantage that Birmingham ever can secure, while 
at the same time Sheffield will always be sure to get as good, if 
not better, railroad rates. Sheffield has an abundant supply of 
water free to all the furnaces, while Birmingham has an ineffi- 
cient supply, and must always pay a heavy water tax. From 
the water tower now being built at Sheffield water can be thrown 
one hundred feet higher than the houses. This will give Shef- 
field the advantage over Birmingham in the matter of protection 



416 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



from fire, and in cheaper insurances. In a sanitary point of view, 
Sheffield excels Birmingham. Sheffield, as a grain and provision 
distributing point, is bound to become the Southern St. Louis. 
In fact, there is a strong contrast in the business combination 
of both places. We can ship Western products as cheaply as can 
Memphis, which, added to the fact that we are one hundred and 
forty miles further in the interior, gives Sheffield just that much 
the advantage in freight rates. 

" Not only has Sheffield these advantages over Birmingham, 
but, in the very nature of things, the latter city will be compelled 
to ship the greater part of her products from the docks of Shef- 
field, thus giving us her tonnage. These barges, which will go 
forth laden with iron and coal and their manufactured products, 
will return with corn and wheat and flour and hay for distribu- 
tion through Southern Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, and South 
Carolina. Then look at the railroad facilities under rival com- 
binations. There is the Richmond terminal system, the Louis- 
ville and Nashville system, and the Huntington system, all of 
which will compete with each other. These rival systems run 
along every point of the compass, and pour into the lap of Shef- 
field the iron, coal, grain, and other products of a continent. 
But Sheffield is not going to be content with the making of 
iron; she will follow out its manufacture into all subsequent 
stages. A pipe company is now at work, and negotiations are 
now being completed for a stove manufactory. Sheffield has the 
Southern market beyond all manner of doubt, and as long as a 
Southern product can find entrance into the market of the North, 
that place so favored will be Sheffield. She can go into all the 
river towns of the West cheaper than any other point in the 
South, and always as cheap as from any point in the East." 

Captain Moses and his associates adopted the policy ordained 
by the Elyton Land Company in making their real estate con- 
cern a leading factor in the bringing of diversified industries and 
donating many acres of land to the town for public purposes. 
The stock of the company soon rose and the prices of real estate 
in proportion. " Investors flocked in from all directions," says 
William G. Brown. " The prosperous state of things throughout 
the recently developed South, in general, affected favorably the 
public attitude toward the youngest product of the new order 
of things in Alabama. Fortunes were rapidly acquired, popu- 
lation greatly increased, houses were built, and companies organ- 
ized for the purpose of building more; stores were set up, and 
two banks. The First National, with C. D. Woodson as presi- 
dent, and the bank of Sheffield, with Alfred H. Moses president, 
each having a capital of $100,000, were organized; real estate 



A SERIES OF LIVELY INCIDENTS 1887 417 



agents came in swarms. There could be no doubt that for suc- 
cess or failure, wisely or unwisely, a vast amount of energy had 
been called into play." 

Captain Moses, in addition to his offices in the Sheffield Land, 
Iron, and Coal Company, as director in the Sheffield Furnace 
Company, and as president of the bank of Sheffield, became a 
director in the Sheffield Pipe and Nail Works, in the Sheffield 
and Tuscumbia Street Railway Company, and also served con- 
tinuously as mayor of Sheffield. In the summer of 1887 occurred 
the significant event of the consolidation of the several corpora- 
tions forming the Sheffield and Birmingham Coal, Iron, and Rail- 
road Company, with a capital stock of $7,225,000. 

The location and the quality of the picturesque in the place, 
its natural advantages as an industrial city, its climate, its facili- 
ties for making and transporting pig iron at so cheap a rate, 
the rapid construction of railroads to the point, — all these at- 
tributes combined to plant it on a solid and permanent basis. 
Among other men, besides those of whom mention has been made, 
whose names are associated with the modern growth of the Shef- 
field District are J. W. Worthington, J. W. Dimmick, Joseph H. 
Nathan, S. B. McTyler, Major Edward Doud, E. M. Ragland, 
and at the present day the " veteran King of the Southern Iron 
world," Henry F. DeBardeleben. The furnace plants of this 
locality are now owned and operated by the Tennessee Coal, Iron, 
and Railroad Company, and the Sloss- Sheffield Steel and Iron 
Company. 

The building up of Sheffield had an immediate effect upon 
the neighboring town of Florence, the county seat of Lauderdale 
County, which had lain since the war in a comatose condition. 
Although this little city, like Tuscumbia (the site of a French 
trading post) and Decatur, had its beginnings in the early nine- 
teenth century, and became in the thirties the distributing point 
for all merchandise in the Valley region, yet it never stepped 
with any vigor into the iron business. Beyond one foundry, the 
Wright and Rice Foundry and the Van Lier furnace, located 
on the northern edge of Lauderdale County, there were no other 
iron enterprises here in antebellum days. No sooner, however, 
did " the town across the river 99 spring up unawares than the citi- 
zens of Florence got together to maintain and promote the indus- 
trial and commercial interests of their locality. The Florence 
Land, Mining, and Manufacturing Company was formed by 

27 



418 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



William Basil Wood and associates, who immediately set to work 
on practical ends. 

Judge Wood, whose grandfather was Alexander Hamilton's 
secretary, was born in Nashville, Tennessee, on October 31, 1820. 
After graduating in law he practiced in Florence in the forties, 
and became judge of the Lauderdale County court. During 
the war he served as colonel of the Sixteenth Alabama Infantry, 
and in 1863 was transferred by President Davis to the Army of 
Northern Virginia and appointed judge of the military court 
of the First Army Corps. After the war, like Colonel Kyle of 
Gadsden, Judge Wood went into the steamboat business and 
engaged in promoting diversified industries. He was associated 
with Samuel D. Weakley and others in various enterprises, owned 
and controlled a line of river steamers, and also promoted rail- 
road interests of northern Alabama, and was the founder of the 
State Normal College and for many years president of its Board 
of Trustees. 

Together with Honorable Wm. C. Sherrod (a member of the 
Forty-first Congress) and others, Judge Wood organized the 
W. B. Wood Furnace Company, in 1887—88, and constructed a 
one hundred and fifty ton blast furnace. He engaged John M. 
Norton, an experienced furnaceman, as superintendent of the 
plant. Major Norton had served under Colonel Sloss at the old 
Oxmoor furnaces in Jefferson County for three years, and had 
been engaged in the construction and management of iron works 
in Kentucky, Ohio, Illinois, and West Virginia. He was the son of 
G. W. Norton, the pioneer nail manufacturer of the Ohio Valley, 
and learned the trade of nail maker under his father when the lat- 
ter had started the first nail works of Wheeling, West Virginia. 
Major Norton also served as superintendent of construction of the 
iron works of the Alabama and Tennessee Company at Sheffield. 

A second blast furnace was built at Florence in 1887 by the 
North Alabama Furnace, Foundry, and Land Company, of which 
Major A. S. Lawton of Atlanta, Georgia, was president. This 
concern, with a capital of $2,000,000 at the outset, represented 
a number of the wealthiest men in the South. It was not long 
before Florence was locking horns with Sheffield; 1901 was the 
town's banner year in so far as industrial enterprise was con- 
cerned, and the progress since then has been steady and whole- 
some. 

Coincident with the rehabilitation of Florence was also that 



A SERIES OF LIVELY INCIDENTS 1887 419 



of the town of Decatur in Morgan County. This city, founded 
shortly after Alabama was admitted to the Union, had a period 
of a certain activity before the war, but at the close of hostilities 
was practically in ruins. Two houses only were left intact. 
Joseph Monroe Hinds, who eventually served as Consul General 
of the United States at Rio Janeiro, and later as United States 
marshal for the Northern District of Alabama, was instrumental, 
together with H. S. Freeman, in the first steps looking towards 
the reconstruction of the place. 

The plan for the new town was to make it an industrial city 
of varied manufactures. It began gradually to work itself out, 
though it may be observed that there was nothing automatic 
about it. 

A young train dispatcher of the Louisville and Nashville Rail- 
road stationed at Decatur in the year 1870 was back of affairs. 
His name was Andrew Calhoun Frey. Although a Canadian by 
birth, he was of Swiss parentage and a practical, farseeing, and 
energetic young man. He made a certain land purchase, — some 
forty-four acres, in the heart of what is now the city, — which 
sold in the eighties at a good round sum, and gave the young 
telegrapher his start. He and his associates then formed the 
Decatur Land Improvement and Furnace Company in 1887, and 
built a one hundred ton blast furnace, and took a strong hand 
in the making of the place, bringing in industries of many sorts. 
At the same time the Decatur Mineral and Land Company was 
organized and officered by Milton Humes, Noble Smithson, 
C. F. Robinson, and W. W. Littlejohn. 

Among other enterprises located there were the Decatur Iron 
Bridge and Construction Company, officered by George A. Mooar 
of Keokuk, Iowa, and by Robert M. Curtis of Chicago; the 
Charcoal Chemical Works, Ivens and Sons Steam Engine and 
Iron-working plant ; the United States Rolling Stock Company, 
and the Consolidated Car Construction and Repair Shop of the 
Louisville and Nashville Railroad, the largest shop of its kind 
(in 1887) south of the Ohio River. 

Thus, as may be seen, the mineral counties of the Highland 
Rim were quick to enter the race for progress. The spirit of 
competition with the counties of the Birmingham District was 
keen and sharp for a few years, but this attitude is gradually 
developing into more of a spirit of co-operation. 



CHAPTER XXV 

THE MARCH OF THE T. C. I. 1888-1895 

Majority control of Tennessee Company acquired by new hands on Wall 
Street. Election of ex-governor J. C. Browne of Tennessee to presidency. 
Senator T. C. Piatt of New York on governing Board. Company pro- 
nounced "a real competitor of Pennsylvania." Senator Piatt succeeds 
Browne as president. Old regime of company returns to power. Nat 
Baxter, Jr., again becomes president. The biggest trade in Tennessee 
Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company's history. Acquisition of the great 
DeBardeleben Coal and Iron Company and Cahaba Coal Mining Com- 
pany. Colonel DeBardeleben's version of the long and the short of 
it. New holdings of Tennessee Company. New board of officers. Panic 
of '93. Truman Aldrich steps into the breach. DeBardeleben takes 
his first and last plunge into Wall Street. Resignation of Alabama 
officers. T. H. Aldrich nominated to Congress. Introduction of William 
Battle Phillips, Albert Edward Barton, J. Warner Shook, Benjamin 
Talbot, Paschal Shook. Anecdote of Mr. Baxter in New York. Playing 
tunes on pig iron warrants. "Tiding over" a crisis. Life line held out 
to company. First making on large commercial scale of basic pig iron 
by George B. McCormack. Turning point in industrial history of Ala- 
bama. Character of Mr. McCormack's work as general manager of 
T. C. I. A. E. Barton's experiments. Lack of capital available for new 
enterprises. Process employed. Value of coal and iron lands in State 
trebled. Steel making era ushered in. 




ATE in the year 1888 another revolution occurred in 
the Tennessee Company. W. M. Duncan interested a 
new group of New York capitalists, Thomas C. Piatt 



among them, and majority control of the company passed into 
their hands. Under their manipulation the price of the capital 
stock went up from 'about thirty cents to one dollar and twenty. 
A new board of directors assumed control of the company and new 
officers were appointed. John C. Browne of Tennessee was elected 
president, Judge H. G. Bond vice-president, and Colonel James 
L. Gaines general manager. 

The new president was a man of a distinguished public record, 
— a former governor of the State of Tennessee and a great rail- 
road man. When called to the presidency of the Tennessee Com- 
pany, he was, however, aged and failing in health. He had 
started in Nashville on his career as a lawyer away back in Bell 
and Bilbo's day. When the Civil War broke out he had worked 



THE MARCH OF THE T. C. I. 1888-1895 421 



up a large practice at his home town of Pulaski, Tennessee, but 
his war record is too considerable for detailed mention here. 
The company he raised became eventually a part of the Third 
Tennessee, and J. C. Browne became a major general. # Then he 
quietly resumed his law practice where he left off at Pulaski. He 
was elected president of the Tennessee Constitutional Conven- 
tion in Nashville in 1870, from which time he took and held 
leadership in the civil affairs of that State. His administration 
as governor of Tennessee continued four years and was sound 
and able. He retired, however, from the political field to become 
one of the vice-presidents of the Texas and Pacific Eailroad, and 
to spur on the completion of that vast system of the south- 
western roads. Serving them as general Western adviser of the 
Gould System, he became at length its president, returning when 
near his sixtieth year to his Nashville home. To a man of so 
active a turn as John C. Browne it must have been a source of 
grief that he must bring to his last enterprise a palsied hand. 
On August 17, 1889, not many months after his election to the 
presidency of the Tennessee Company, he died rather suddenly. 

On September 6 of the same year the new dirctors of the com- 
pany elected Honorable Thomas C. Piatt of New York to the 
office. Senator Piatt having looked after the New York end 
of the company for some little time was more or less familiar 
with its internal affairs. He had, in fact, at one time made a 
personal tour of inspection of the properties. " I believe," he 
said then, "that without question it is the greatest property of 
the kind upon earth, and that there is a future for it such as 
will attract the whole business world in but a little time to come." 

Mr. Piatt expressed his gratification at being elected presi- 
dent as follows : " I shall not be a figurehead ; of that I assure 
every one. I regard the position I hold among you as the most 
honorable and the highest in a business sense that I have yet 
been called to fill. It shall be my endeavor to serve the com- 
pany's interest to the utmost extent of my abilities. I shall 
watch your interests in New York and co-operate with the Nash- 
ville headquarters in all particulars, looking to the company's 
interests, and I shall make a point of being with you in Nashville 
as often as necessity suggests." 

This was the period when young George B. McCormack, the 
only member of the old board of officers retained, was made 
superintendent and general manager of the Pratt mines division, 



422 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



succeeding Charles P. Ball. Now, together with Erskine Ram- 
say, he bent all of his efforts to the work in hand. An article 
descriptive of the Tennessee Company properties in the Pitts- 
burg Chronicle Telegraph (1890) speaks of the Pratt mines 
division as follows : 

" The Pratt mines were among the first coal mines opened in 
Alabama, and the first from which a good quality of furnace coke 
was made. These works were consolidated with the Tennessee 
Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company, and are now the largest coal 
and coke plants in the South. The division is under the general 
supervision of Mr. G. B. McCormack, with Mr. Erskine Ramsay, 
a well-known young mining engineer, formerly superintendent 
of the Southwest Coal Company's works in the Connellsville 
District of Pennsylvania, in charge of the mining department. 
They are both practical men and have made some important 
improvements about the works during the past year. They now 
have eight large mine openings and 806 coke ovens in full opera- 
tion. They furnish coal for the 300 ovens of the Thomas fur- 
nace, the 250 ovens at the Alice furnace, and the 250 at the Sloss 
ovens in Birmingham. The output has been largely increased 
during the past year. 

" During the month of January the output of the mines was 
107,000 tons. This, notwithstanding all mines were idle on New 
Year's and the usual demoralization following the holiday fes- 
tivities. The total output during the year 1889 was 1,108,300 
tons, an increase over the previous year of 232,070 tons. The 
Pratt mine coke ovens made 267,514 tons of coke, being an in- 
crease over the previous year of 79,820 tons of coke. About 2,000 
free laborers and 800 convicts are steadily employed about the 
different works here. 

" All openings into the coal have been skilfully and systematic- 
ally made into the Warrior coal seam. . . . Mr. Ramsay has 
made some important improvements at Shaft No. 1. The tail- 
rope haulage system was introduced to bring the coal to the 
bottom of the shaft. It now extends back 2,700 feet and will 
soon extend 1,000 feet further in the McArdle slope. Mr. 
Ramsay recently completed what was probably one of the 
greatest feats in mining engineering ever performed in the 
South. He sunk an air shaft 360 feet deep ; three-quarters of a 
mile back from the hoisting shaft, 210 feet was driven down 
from the surface and 150 from the interior of the mine. 
What made the feat the more difficult was the outside surveys 
had to be made over badly broken ground, deep ravines, etc. He 
was assisted in this work by Mr. H. A. Lint. They have some 
fine machinery at this mine for hoisting, pumping, etc. The 
large Yough pump, built by Boyts, Porter, and Company, of 
Connellsville, Pennsylvania, and placed in this shaft a year ago, 




1. Face of a Working Heading in Muscoda Mines, Red 

Mountain, T. C. I. 

2. Method of dumping Ore into Skips 



THE MARCH OF THE T. C. I. 1888-1895 423 



has done great service. Had it not been for this pump, when the 
mine took fire last summer, it would have been doubtful if they 
could have mastered it. About 800 tons of coal is hoisted from 
this shaft daily." 

The Nashville Union observed editorially about this time: 
" Nothing has ever been done in the South that looks so much 
like being a real competitor of Pennsylvania in the iron business 
as this organization with $10,000,000 capital." 

In 1891 another change in the company took place; the 
former regime, headed by Inman, again acquired majority con- 
trol of the Tennessee Coal Company stock. Nat Baxter, Jr., 
again became president, succeeding Senator Piatt, and Colonel 
Shook, T. T. Hillman, and James Bowron again became con- 
nected with the Tennessee Company, while Mr. Duncan re- 
signed his position as chairman of the executive committee. 

No sooner was Mr. Baxter in authority once more than he 
made another big deal for the Tennessee Company, — acquiring 
the DeBardeleben Coal and Iron Company, and the Cahaba Coal 
Mining Company. The deal came about in this way: From 
the date of its entrance into Alabama the Tennessee Company 
had been the active rival of Colonel DeBardeleben' s great com- 
pany. A rumor that the Tennessee Coal Company people were 
considering the purchase of the Sloss Company put the various 
other Alabama coal and iron dealers on their mettle. Both 
Colonel DeBardeleben and Mr. Aldrich scented disaster for 
themselves and their immediate associates, were this consolida- 
tion effected. The colonel decided, therefore, to get first hold 
of the Tennessee Company himself, and make it, as he says, " a 
crawfish for his feeding." He had spun the State of Alabama 
around like a top. There was not his match as a speculator and 
as a trader, south of the Tennessee. But he did not reckon north 
of the Tennessee. Furthermore, Colonel DeBardeleben was not 
aware that the Tennessee Company was, early in 1891, again 
on the verge of bankruptcy, owing to the Wall Street manipula- 
tions. The colonel's properties and Aldrich's were some of the 
greatest stuff in Alabama, "practically of the cream of the 
whole mineral region," it was generally agreed. 

DeBardeleben and Baxter met. Mr. Baxter persuaded the 
"King of the Southern iron world" to exchange $10,000,000 
worth of good stock for $8,000,000 of the Tennessee Company's 
securities. Coming into the deal Mr. Aldrich also exchanged 



424 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



his great Cahaba coal properties for Tennessee Coal Company 
securities. Said DeBardeleben : " I had been the eagle eating 
the crawfish. Now a bigger eagle than I had ever been came 
along and swallowed me. That's the long and the short of 
that trade." 

The great deal struck upon the Southern coal and iron horizon 
as a bolt out of the blue. The Tennessee Company now possessed 
in addition to the mineral lands and furnaces of the Pratt 
Coal and Iron Company, and its own holdings in Tennessee, 
the new group of Bessemer furnaces, the historic Oxmoor fur- 
naces, ore properties on " pretty near the whole of Red Moun- 
tain," and Champion besides, and the coal fields of Helena, 
Henry Ellen, Blue Creek, Blocton, and Gurnee. 

" The night after the trade," says Mr. Baxter, " we were all 
up in Inman's room at the hotel, considering what we ? d capi- 
talize at. Inman said, — you know that offhand way of his, — 
' Boys, call it twenty millions.' " Thus the company was then 
and there reorganized and placed on a basis of twenty million 
dollars. For the remainder of the year the three companies 
ran on as they were. 

In the latter part of 1891 an experiment of particular in- 
terest occurred, — the making of the first low silicon or basic 
iron. At that time the general characteristic of Birmingham 
pig iron was high silicon with an average of two and one half 
per cent. Colonel DeBardeleben, Mr. Roberts, and Mr. Aldrich 
became interested in a process by which it was said the iron 
could be softened, and they ordered the experiment tried at the 
Little Belle furnace. John Dowling was then the furnaceman 
in charge and he says : " We had eight beds of chill molds made 
at Begg's foundry, and rubbed a lot of graphite on the inside of 
the molds. Then by blowing cold and using more lime to make 
a bath to absorb the silicon we got the iron down to about one half 
of one per cent of silicon. We made some three or four hundred 
tons." 

This was the first basic iron made in Alabama and it 
was sold to parties in Massachusetts. This experiment was 
attempted in order to show that basic iron could be made di- 
rectly from the blast furnace without the necessity for any 
special patented process. Mr. John Ford of Youngstown, Ohio, 
had visited the Birmingham District and told Mr. Roberts and 
Mr. Aldrich how to do it with Alabama ores and furnaces. 



THE MARCH OF THE T. C. I. 1888-1895 425 



In 1892 an election of officers of the consolidated properties 
took place and the three large companies, each comprising in 
themselves so many subsidiary companies, were formally united 
and became the Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company. 
The full list at this date is as follows: First, the Tennessee 
Company which comprehended the Sewanee Mining Company, 
the Sewanee Furnace Company, the Southern States Coal, Iron, 
and Land Company, and all of the properties of the Pratt Coal 
and Iron Company (the latter in turn comprised the three Ala- 
bama companies, Alice Furnace Company, Pratt Coal and Coke 
Company, and the Linn Iron Works). Second, the DeBardele- 
ben Coal and Iron Company and its consolidated companies; 
Eureka Furnace Company, Little Belle Furnace Company, and 
Henry Ellen Company. Third, the Cahaba Coal Mining Com- 
pany with its partner, the Excelsior Mining Company. Thus 
the Tennessee Company was now made up practically of twelve 
different companies. It subsequently (in 1898) acquired the 
Robinson Mining Company, owning a contracting outfit on 
its lands; the Sheffield Coal, Iron, and Steel Company, the 
Smith Company (another contracting outfit) in 1899; and the 
Bessemer Rolling Mill Company in 1900, making a final total of 
sixteen companies merged into the one, owned at the present 
day principally by the United States Steel Corporation. 

The new board of officers elected in 1892 were: Nat Baxter, 
president; H. F. DeBardeleben, first vice-president; T. H. 
Aldrich, second vice-president and general manager, and David 
Roberts, third vice-president; James Bowron, secretary and 
treasurer; G. B. McCormack, assistant general manager; and 
Erskine Ramsay, chief engineer. Two vacant stores in the Potter 
building on Morris Avenue were leased and thrown into offices, 
and the main headquarters of the Tennessee Coal Company were 
soon afterwards removed from Nashville to Birmingham. 

The panic of '93 caught the company and all lent hand then 
for its common interests. The price of iron went down to six 
dollars per ton at the furnace. Credit was refused the com- 
pany, while some of the directors let it alone, to sink or swim 
as it might. Notwithstanding its tremendous properties it was 
forced to struggle for life. 

Speaking of this crisis Mr. Aldrich says : " Mr. Baxter di- 
rected the company through these days with skill and ability. 
At all times clear-headed and logical, and a pretty strong 



426 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



financier, he took care of the obligations, and met them every 
one. The only man we could get credit from in Birmingham 
about the top of the panic was Braxton Bragg Comer. He 
seemed to be about the only person who thought the Tennessee 
Company would get out alive." 

Mr. Comer (who in 1906 was elected governor of Alabama) 
let the Tennessee Coal Company have some $19,000 worth of grain 
and flour from his mills during the panic. Every morning he 
would drop in the office to see General Manager AldriclL 

" Going to bust to-day ? " he would inquire. 

"Not to-day, Mr. Comer," Mr Aldrich invariably replied, 
"but I can't tell about to-morrow." 

Mr. Baxter says : " We swapped and we bartered and we traded 
and we kept on doing it. All our pig iron was stacked up and 
we couldn't sell it, so we used it as collateral with which to 
borrow money to meet current expenses. I remember Morris 
Adler, who then had a wholesale grocery, kept our stores full, 
exchanging his goods for our pig iron. Then I 'd buy up prop- 
erty now and then to keep the tune going and have people say, 
'Why the Tennessee Company just paid a million dollars for 
another piece of Red Mountain.' It was good stock in trade, you 
know. A friend of mine said : 6 These Tennesseeans make their 
living swapping jackknives and horses, and that's the only way 
Baxter got the Tennessee Company through '93.' As a matter 
of fact, you know, that was the truth. Trading carried us 
through, and we lived on paper." 

A day came, however, when even the life of the paper was 
threatened. Every spring in Wall Street seemed to have gone 
dry, so far as nourishment to the Tennessee Coal Company went. 
A note for $40,000 had to be met, and the money could not be 
obtained in the South. The credit of the company had to be 
sustained or the whole structure would fall. It was in the very 
midst of the crisis when the banks had closed, and the officers 
of the company could not even get their own money out of the 
banks; when all excepting four of the blast furnaces were shut 
down, and there was no sale for the iron made by these four; 
and when thousands of tons of pig iron were stacked up all over 
the ground. When all other officers had failed to raise the 
funds, Mr. Aldrich went up to New York to try to raise the 
money for the note. After showing the directors that the Ten- 
nessee Company had over half a million dollars worth of pig 



THE MARCH OF THE T. C. I. 1888-1895 427 



iron they all agreed to advance $175,000 at a six per cent rate 
(with the exception of Mr. Inman who charged sixteen per cent), 
accepting pig iron as security. T. H. Aldrich' s action at this 
juncture helped the Tennessee Company over its most critical 
period. 

No sooner was the panic safely weathered than the Tennessee 
Company and nearly all of the coal and iron companies of the 
Birmingham District faced a heavy and disastrous strike. Low 
prices in iron continued to prevail throughout 1893 and early in 
1894. There began to be discerned signs of improvement, 
however, and Colonel DeBardeleben, " persuaded that another 
boom was in the wind," went up to New York to play a great 
game — to buy up for himself all the blocks of Tennessee 
Company stock so as to gain majority control. It was the Ala- 
bama, mining King's first plunge into Wall Street; " and there," 
he said, " I met my Waterloo." He came back " dead broke." 
Although, still occupying high official position with the company, 
his entire personal fortune now fed the winds together with all 
the dollars of those of his associates who had backed him in the 
mad venture. Now in the great company in which he had 
formerly owned millions of dollars worth of stock, DeBardeleben 
had, when the gambling game was over and done, not one dol- 
lar's worth. He beat disabled wings a space. Speaking of it 
long afterwards he said : " They cut my claws, and you can't 
fight without claws. When my money went I came to hear men's 
voices change, see their expression change. . . . And I clawed 
the rocks." 

But his old-time energies eventually returned. After his 
resignation (late in 1894) from the Tennessee Company, he 
embarked on new enterprises, and is at the present day vice- 
president of the Alabama Fuel and Iron Company, and with his 
sons has begun the building of other great mining enterprises 
in the Sheffield District. 

As for Mr. Aldrich, he also resigned from the Tennessee 
Company in 1894, and selling out his interests in the historic 
Montevallo property to his brother, W. F. Aldrich, he entered 
the political field. Nominated for the Fifty-fourth Congress 
jointly by the Eepublican and People's party, he represented 
the Ninth District for a brief term. He obtained appropriations 
to develop the waterways, and, as the record shows, he championed 
every matter of value to the South, whether of party value or 



428 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



not. Mention of Mr. Aldrich's subsequent operations will be 
made in another chapter. 

Mr. Roberts, whose death occurred in 1909, retained his office 
as vice-president in the Tennessee Company until 1897, when, in 
conjunction with the other South Carolina stockholders, he sold 
out all of his interests in the company. He subsequently organ- 
ized the Brilliant Coal Company which he officered in 1907-08 
together with his son, David Roberts, Jr., and General. E. W. 
Rucker. 

Connected with the Tennessee Company on or about this 
period, in addition to the officers mentioned, were William Battle 
Phillips, Ph. D., chemist and metallurgist for the company; 
Albert E. Barton, superintendent of the Ensley division; 
Warner Shook, Benjamin Talbot, and Paschal Shook. 

Dr. Phillips, a graduate of the University of North Carolina 
and the School of Mines at Freiberg, Saxony, was a native of 
North Carolina. He was born at Chapel Hill, July 4, 1857. 
In 1888 he opened an engineering and chemical office in Birming- 
ham in company with Clarence R. Claghorn. He also acted as 
professor of chemistry and metallurgy in the University of 
Alabama and later went to New York as chief of the editorial 
staff on the Engineering and Mining Journal. Returning to 
Birmingham he became connected with the Tennessee Coal Com- 
pany, with which company he served until 1898. The company's 
chemical department was organized by Dr. Phillips, and systematic 
methods of sampling and analyzing their raw materials and pro- 
ducts were instituted by him. He also conducted extensive experi- 
ments on the concentration under patents of Barton and McCor- 
mack of the low grade iron ores of the Birmingham District. Dr. 
Phillips, as secretary of the Birmingham Commercial Club, 
carried an exhibit from the district to the Omaha exposition 
which won a gold medal. About this time he also prepared for 
the Alabama Geographical Survey a monograph on iron making 
in Alabama. 

In 1898 Dr. Phillips became editor of the American Manu- 
facturer and Iron World, and two years later was called to 
Texas to organize and conduct the mineral survey of that State. 
He returned to Birmingham in 1906 to resume the practice of 
his profession as metallurgist and consulting engineer until again 
called to Texas in 1909. Together with the work of the State 
geologist, Dr. Eugene A. Smith, the publications of William 



THE MARCH OF THE T. C. I. 1888-1895 429 



Battle Phillips are held as the standard technical authorities on 
the Alabama mineral region. 1 

Mr. Barton entered Alabama in 1887, coming direct from 
England where he had been associated several years in the smelt- 
ing of iron. He took first the position of chemist for the Eureka 
Company at Oxmoor, later becoming connected with the manage- 
ment of a number of other furnace plants in the Birmingham 
District. In 1890 he left the Woodward Iron Company to take 
a position with the Tennessee Company. It was while at Ensley 
that Mr. Barton was instrumental in bringing about the Ten- 
nessee Company's first export trade in Southern pig iron. Dur- 
ing the great depression that existed in the Southern iron trade, 
the officials of the Tennessee Company, prominent among them 
Mr. Bowron, conceived the idea that it might be possible to find 
a market in Europe for the iron that was being accumulated in 
the company's yards. Mr. Baxter decided to send some one 
over to investigate this. Mr. Barton was selected, and during 
his visit abroad was successful in introducing pig iron to con- 
sumers in Italy, Austria, Germany, England, and Scotland, 
placing a considerable tonnage. This beginning brought further 
business which, under the leadership of Mr. Bowron, had the 
result that Birmingham was able to exchange a considerable 
proportion of the raw material that was being mined for foreign 
money that was for the most part spent in the district. 

Associated with Mr. Barton for a short period as assistant 
superintendent at Ensley was J. Warner Shook, a son of Colo- 
nel Shook, a graduate of Sewanee and of the Boston Institute of 
Technology. Young Mr. Shook started in at the Ensley works 
in the eighteen-nineties, as a machinist. During the first handling 
of the basic iron in 1895—96 there was adopted an invention of 
his, a steam device for cleaning the cinder cars mechanically, 
which eventually came into general use in the district. Mr. 
Shook is at the present time vice-president and general manager 
of the Central Iron and Coal Company at Holt, Alabama. 

Benjamin Talbot, like Mr. Barton, was by birth an English- 
man. He had been acting as superintendent of the Southern 
Iron and Steel Company at Chattanooga, but in 1891 entered 
the employ of the Tennessee Coal Company. He was born in 

1 These are found in the various journals edited by Dr. Phillips, and 
also in the files of the Iron Trade Review, The Iron Age, and in the " Trans- 
actions of the American Institute of Mining Engineers." 



430 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



Shropshire, 1864. His father, Benjamin Talbot, owned the Castle 
Iron Works at Willington, Shropshire, and operated a small 
Clapp-Grimths steel plant. Young Talbot's first experience in 
the trade was manufacturing "basic open-hearth steel." 

His assistant in his various experiments was young Paschal 
Shook, Colonel Shook's oldest son. When the Tennessee Coal 
Company moved its headquarters to Birmingham, young Shook 
was acting as stenographer to George B. McCormack. He after- 
wards became associated as an officer with the Alabama Steel 
and Ship Building Company. In 1909 Paschal Shook is asso- 
ciated in business with John Fletcher. A portion of their com- 
pany's brown ore holdings is situated on the historic old Cane 
Creek Iron Works property in Calhoun County. 

As for Mr. Talbot, he left the Tennessee Company in 1893 to 
take the position of steel works superintendent at the Pencoyd 
Steel Works in Pennsylvania. Here he commenced the manu- 
facture of basic open-hearth steel, and in 1899 brought to per- 
fection the Continuous Steel process, which bears his name, and 
which invention has placed him in the front rank of steel men. 
When the Pencoyd Steel Works were absorbed by the United 
States Steel Corporation in 1901, Mr. Talbot returned to Eng- 
land to develop the Continuous Steel process there. He became 
managing director of the Cargo Fleet Iron Company of Middles- 
brough. In 1908 he received the highest honor to be obtained 
in the iron and steel world, — the Bessemer medal of the Iron 
and Steel Institute. 

Meanwhile, the improvement in the iron trade so long hoped 
for did not brighten the financial affairs of the Tennessee Com- 
pany. Another note of $40,000 came due in the spring of 1895. 
" I saw a receiver around the corner," said President Baxter, 
" and I started for New York in a hurry." Here a meeting of 
the board of directors was called and Mr. Baxter stated the facts 
and asked for $40,000 to make the paper good. A blank silence 
was his answer. Then one director reached for his derby; an- 
other director took out his watch; one had a train to catch; 
another one, an appointment; but at this juncture Mr. Baxter 
stood up: 

" Gentlemen," he said, " if we 're going to break up, let % 
break up orderly. You're afraid you won't get your interest. 
I want to tell you all right here now that I guarantee personally 



THE MARCH OF THE T. C. I. 1888-1895 431 



to you that every interest installment on the bonds will be paid 
to you the day it 's due, every cent of it. You know the condi- 
tions. You see the case is desperate. Your company, men, will 
go to the wall within twenty-four hours unless this money is 
raised/' 

Every director, excepting John H. Inman and James T. Wood- 
ward, filed out of the room. Mr. Woodward " sat like a man 
paralyzed," but Mr. Inman was holding his sides laughing, and 
u laughing fit to kill." Although it was the funeral of his own 
company, and " by rights he was chief mourner, yet here he was 
turning it into a regular Irish wake ! " 

Mr. Woodward finally went to his bank and Mr. Baxter to the 
street, his pockets full of the Tennessee Coal Company paper. He 
went across to Brooklyn and saw George Hull. Playing tunes 
on pig iron warrants was an accomplishment in which every 
Tennessee Coal Company official by this time excelled. Mr. 
Baxter sold $10,000 worth of warrants to Mr. Hull, "on the 
tune, not the facts this time." With Hull's check in hand the 
spirits of the Tennessee Company president rose, and he sold 
warrant after warrant. That evening, " almost done up," he 
went back to the Hanover National Bank to see Mr. Woodward, 
who had been sending runners out after him all afternoon. 
" Woodward, I 've placed $30,000 worth ! " he said, and wiped 
the perspiration from his face. 

Woodward jumped to his feet : " The deuce you have ! " he 
exclaimed. They telephoned Inman then, and the little $10,000 
left was like making up a dime. " I wired the news to the boys 
in Birmingham," said Mr. Baxter. " They felt pretty good, and 
folks all around said: 'Well, it looks as if the Tennessee Com- 
pany is getting on its feet again. But then, they 've got all those 
big guns of directors in New York behind 'em, backing every 
step they take.' No wonder Baxter has a cinch! All he does 
is run up to Broadway and say to a director, ( Here, give me a 
million dollars,' and the director forks it over ! " 

In the month of July, 1895, occurred the most signal achieve- 
ment of the Tennessee Company up to this date. It was the first 
production on a large commercial scale of basic pig iron. This 
event, which marks the turning-point of the industrial history 
of Alabama, in that it served to swing the district into steel 
making, was brought about by George B. McCormack. 



432 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



But slight mention has been made of Mr. McCormack up to 
this period, when from positions of shipping clerk, operator, 
stenographer, auditor, superintendent and general manager of 
Pratt mines division, and assistant general manager, he had now 
become general manager of the Tennessee Company, and was 
proving himself to be a man of positive captaincy. It will be 
recalled that, beginning with old Sewanee days, he had obtained 
firm grip on every detail of the company's business and had won 
the confidence and respect of his officers. " His industry, good 
judgment, and practical ability impressed every one," says Colo- 
nel Shook. To reduce the cost of production now became his 
main effort when he, at length, reached a position of authority. 
When pig iron was brought down finally at Bessemer to $5.30 
per ton cost under his management, there was great satisfaction. 

The superintendent of the Bessemer furnaces, then Llewellyn 
Johns, exhibits to-day with the greatest pride the following letter 
written him by General Manager McCormack relative to this 
matter : 

" You have certainly broken all records on coke pig iron made 
from red ores and I believe have broken all records for coke iron 
made from other ores. It shows that you and those under you 
deserve and will receive a great deal of credit for the good work 
you are doing. If all the furnace plant of this company can be 
brought down to your record in cost it would make onir company 
the richest in the world. 

" (Signed) G. B. McCokmack." 

Mr. McCormack was, in 1895, together with Mr. Bowron, the 
only active resident officer of the Tennessee Company, and he 
had in his sole charge every portion of the operating end in 
mining, manufacturing, and transportation. His administra- 
tion carried with it the opening of many new mines and the con- 
struction of many new plants of various kinds. It was the period 
of the company's greatest growth. 

Mr. McCormack had principles of economy on his fingers' 
ends. Then, too, he kept minutely and precisely informed about 
every division under his supervision, and lost no occasion to 
encourage and co-operate with his men. 

"Every morning, regular as a clock, year in and year out," 
relates John Shannon, who was then furnace superintendent of 
Alice furnaces, " Mr. McCormack would ride up on horseback 
and take a careful look over the furnaces, talk things over with 



THE MARCH OF THE T. C. I. 1888-1895 433 



me, and ask if I had any suggestions to make, or if there was 
anything I wanted done. He never failed to make his daily 
inspection personally/' 

"McCormack was always experimenting/' declares Mr. Aid- 
rich. " I remember at the Little Belle, especially, he was forever 
making something new. For instance, one experiment in which 
he and Barton were interested demonstrated that a sixty per cent 
concentrate could be produced from Eed Mountain ores, and 
that when ore should become dearer, \he low grades of the dis- 
trict could be used to advantage. Such low percentage ore of 
which hundreds of millions of tons exist could not then be treated 
like this with any profit, as the richer ores were selling too 
cheaply in competition." 

There eventually grew up between Mr. McCormack and Mr. 
Barton a strong friendship, a circumstance indirectly related to 
the basic iron business. On one occasion, when Mr. McCormack 
was discussing with Mr. Barton the making of special grades of 
iron to fill certain orders, the English iron expert declared that 
he could make a basic pig iron fit for being converted into open- 
hearth steel, and he went into a detailed explanation of how he 
would proceed to do so. He convinced Mr. McCormack of his 
ability to do it. As it chanced just at this particular juncture 
there was no market for either foundry pig iron or mill iron, on 
which all their furnaces were running, while there was a demand 
for basic pig iron ; but it was then generally considered an im- 
possibility to make this grade of iron out of Alabama ores. Mr. 
Barton states in this connection: 

" Unfortunately the local ore contained too much phosphorus 
to be made into steel by either the Bessemer or Open Hearth acid 
processes, and not enough for the Basic Bessemer process, which 
were those then commonly in use elsewhere. It was found to 
be impossible to eliminate the phosphorus in the blast furnace, 
and experiments were conducted at Ensley for the manufacture 
of a pig iron higher in phosphorus than that usually made by 
the addition of phosphatic rock as a flux, so as to make the iron 
suitable for the basic Bessemer process. There was then no 
demand for such pig iron, and the necessary capital for convert- 
ing it into steel was not available, and this was therefore not 
tried commercially. About this time the basic Open Hearth 
process began to come to the fore, and for this southern pig iron 
would be suitable, providing the percentage of silicon and sul- 
phur could be kept sufficiently low. With the siliceous and vari- 
able ore obtainable this was not thought practicable, and sug- 

28 



434 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



gestions were made for treating the ordinary siliceous pig iron 
first in an acid Bessemer Converter, so as to remove a portion 
of the silicon. This, however, would have been a wasteful and 
costly process. It was therefore decided to try to reduce the 
silicon by pouring the iron through a fluid basic bath. 

" Together with Mr. Benjamin Talbot of Continuous Process 
fame, I attempted to reduce the silicon in the ordinary iron made 
at Ensley by pouring it through a bath of blast furnace slag, 
made sufficiently basic by the addition of oxide of iron or finely 
powdered ore. This at first appeared to be successful, as the 
silicon was reduced below the limit required, but unfortunately 
at the same time the sulphur from the slag was absorbed by the 
pig iron so as to make such a process useless commercially. These 
experiments went on continuously." 

When, at length, Mr. Barton announced that he could make a 
basic iron the matter was at once placed by Mr. McCormack, 
who had every faith in his ability, before the higher officials of 
the company, and every influence was brought by him to have 
the experiment made. From time to time it was urged. It was, 
to Mr. McCormack's notion, the one hope, not only for the Ten- 
nessee Company, but for the Birmingham District. One morn- 
ing Mr. Baxter received a telegram from the Matthew Addy 
people, asking him to quote a price on twenty-five thousand tons 
of basic iron. 

" There was not a furnace of the Tennessee Company fitted for 
the manufacture of such iron," writes Mr. Barton, " and the 
addition of a heavy burden of lime to a furnace with such vari- 
able ores as had to be used might probably result in the loss of 
the furnace upon which the experiment was tried." 

Mr. McCormack and Mr. Barton figured that the loss to the 
company in case they failed would be $1,000. " Just that much 
out," said Mr. Baxter, "when we need every cent we can get 
to keep our heads above water." Said Mr. McCormack : " There 
we stood shivering at a $1,000 outlay for a tremendous thing, 
when to-day there would n't be the slightest hesitation, I daresay, 
about putting $100,000 in some new engine out at Ensley." Mr. 
Barton says: 

" Mr. Baxter agreed to a trial being made. No money was 
then available for any structural alterations. The tuyeres were, 
however, drawn back on one of the old furnaces on which it was 
decided to make the experiment, so as to increase the diameter 
of the hearth, while some increase of blowing power was obtained 
at the expense of the other furnaces. A heavy burden of lime 



THE MARCH OF THE T. C. I. 1888-1895 435 



was put upon the furnace, and then began a weary time for all 
those connected with the Ensley division. There was no diffi- 
culty in the making of iron sufficiently low in either sulphur or 
silicon. But to get them both to the required limit at the same 
time was found to be very difficult. 

" A quantity of iron was, however, made just above the limit, 
and this was unsuitable for either foundry or basic purposes and 
then unsalable. For weeks the place was like an inferno, but 
every one had determined to see the matter through if it was at 
all possible. The varying character of the material was the 
chief cause of the trouble, and the seat of operations was at length 
transferred to the Alice furnace, over which I then had general 
supervision and where there were better facilities. A quantity 
of ore of known chemical composition was first collected there, 
and dolomite substituted for limestone as flux, in order to keep 
the basic slag as fluid as possible, and after the experience gained 
at Ensley a cast of iron was obtained at the third attempt which 
met all the requirements of the specification, and the furnace 
kept on making such iron cast after cast without much trouble, 
under the watchful eye of Mr. John Shannon, the then furnace 
manager at Alice." 

According to Mr. Bowron's notes this basic metal pig iron was 
cast in sand at the Alice furnace, July 22, 1895. Chilled basic 
iron was cast in metal molds a few weeks later, August 15, and 
the following week the sale was made to Carnegie through the 
commission house of Matthew Addy and Company of Cincinnati. 
This was subject to a test of the first four thousand tons. It 
proved satisfactory, and the full amount of twenty-five thousand 
tons was ordered, and by October of 1895 the Tennessee Com- 
pany was selling basic pig iron to the Carnegie people, the Illi- 
nois Steel Company, and various large Pittsburg firms. 

" The value of this action of George B. McCormack^s to the 
Tennessee Company at this time, and in fact to the whole dis- 
trict, was incalculable," said Mr. Baxter. " It saved us from 
eventually going into the hands of a receiver. It opened up a 
market that otherwise we should not have had ; it kept our fur- 
naces in blast, and it led the way to our export trade. It doubled 
— I may say trebled — the value of every man's coal and iron 
ore properties in the State, besides our own, and, furthermore, it 
was this, and this alone, that ushered in the steel making era of 
Alabama." 



CHAPTEK XXVI 

AFFAIRS OF BIRMINGHAM DISTRICT 1890-1909. BIRMINGHAM 
COAL AND IRON COMPANY. DIMMICK PIPE COMPANY. 
SOUTHERN IRON AND STEEL COMPANY. SLOSS- 
SHEFFIELD STEEL AND IRON COMPANY 

Organization of Tutwiler Coal, Coke, and Iron Company. Foundation of 
Birmingham Coal and Iron Company. Development work inaugurated 
by Major Tutwiler, Morris Adler, and E. L. Adler. Trade with the 
Birmingham Coal and Iron Company. Career of Edward M. Tutwiler. 
Construction of Georgia Pacific Railroad. Purchase of Coalburg prop- 
erties from John T. Milner. Retirement of Colonel Milner. Sloss 
Company acquires Coalburg. How Major Tutwiler managed strikes. 
Formation of Dimmick Pipe Company. Biographical sketch of J. K. 
Dimmick, "the Dean of the Cast Iron Pipe Business." "How destiny 
hung on a ferryboat ride." Biographical sketch of Fred Dimmick, 
president of Dimmick Pipe Company. Organization of Alabama Steel 
and Wire Company, 1898. Growth of company. Acquisition of Under- 
wood properties in Blount and Etowah counties. Merger with Lacey- 
Buek Iron Company (1906). Former officers and directors of Southern 
Steel Company. Backward glance into records of Lacey-Buek Company. 
Biographical sketch of C. E. Buek. Unwise policy of consolidated com- 
pany brings it into hands of receiver. Extraordinary resurrection of 
bankrupt concern. Capital and legal genius applied to bring company 
to life. Personnel of committee on reorganization. James T. Woodward, 
president Hanover National Bank, R. B. Van Cortlandt, W. W. Miller, 
and Cornelius Vanderbilt among strong New York group. Plan of reor- 
ganization. Chairman of Board of Trustees elected president of Southern 
Iron and Steel Company. Officers of new management. Biographical 
sketch of W. P. G. Harding. Review of W. H. Hassinger's career. Sketch 
of James E. Strong. Capitalization of new company. Location of prop- 
erties in three States. Formation of Sloss-Sheffield Steel and Iron 
Company. Resume" of its history. Truman H. Aldrich enters service 
of company. John Campbell Maben of Virginia elected president in 
1902. Connection of Maben family with the colonial iron-master, Lieu- 
tenant-Governor Spotswood. Appointment of John Shannon as general 
superintendent of blast furnaces. Jones G. Moore made manager of 
mines. Sketch of vice-president J. W. McQueen. Interesting associa- 
tion of McQueen family with old Scottish Chiefs. 




HE years following the panic of '93 were exceed- 
ingly active in the Birmingham District. Many new 
coal and iron companies were formed and old ones 



were reorganized. The Tutwiler Coal, Coke, and Iron Com- 
pany, parent stock of the present-day Birmingham Coal and 
Iron Company, was one of the successful concerns starting 



AFFAIRS OF BIRMINGHAM DISTRICT 1890-1909 437 



operations about this time, being organized in November, 1893, 
by Major Edward Magmder Tutwiler. Like the Woodward 
Iron Company it went in for legitimate development work on a 
quiet, steady scale, and became a money-making enterprise from 
the start. In 1897 the blast furnace Vanderbilt, then just recently 
erected, was acquired by Major Tutwiler, together with thirty-six 
thousand acres of coal and ore properties, sixteen thousand acres 
of which contained the Pratt Seam of coal. A minority interest 
in the company was bought three years later by Morris Adler 
and E. L. Adler. Morris Adler became vice-president and E. L. 
Adler general manager, while Major Tutwiler continued as presi- 
dent. The Adler brothers brought in additional mineral properties 
to the extent of twenty-eight thousand acres. The company also 
acquired about this time the iron ore lands known as the Songo 
mines on Red Mountain near Bessemer, which property was origi- 
nally purchased, as has been related, by Daniel Hillman, Jr., from 
Major Peters shortly after the Civil War. These mines, and the 
company's coal mines at Murray and Short Creek, were then 
developed by Major Tutwiler, batteries of coke ovens were built, 
and washers and modern machinery installed. 

In 1906 the Tutwiler Coal, Coke, and Iron Company sold out 
to the Birmingham Iron Company. This latter company, to- 
gether with the Birmingham Coal Company, originally chartered 
under the laws of New York, was closely allied with the Atlanta, 
Birmingham, and Atlantic Railroad, of which H. M. Atkinson 
is president. After acquiring the furnace plant and mineral 
properties of the Tutwiler Company, it was reorganized as the 
Birmingham Coal and Iron Company. 

At the time of the formation of his old company, in 1893, 
Major Tutwiler had been in the Birmingham District precisely 
ten years. His business was originally civil engineering. When 
he first put up at the old Relay House he was assistant chief 
engineer of the Georgia Pacific Railroad, which was being built 
by the Richmond and Danville Construction Company. Early in 
1881 some thirteen thousand acres of mineral lands belonging to 
the Milner Coal and Railroad Company were purchased by the 
Richmond and Danville people, and Major Tutwiler was ap- 
pointed superintendent of the properties. This company had 
been organized by John T. Milner in 1879; one mine had been 
opened on the Pratt seam, and nine miles of railroad (now in- 
corporated in the Southern system) had been constructed by 



438 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



Colonel Milner. Following the sale, which brought a clear 
profit of over $200,000 to Colonel Milner, he retired from active 
operations to his home at Newcastle, devoting his time mainly 
to the development of the Newcastle mines, and to study and 
writing. 1 

The Georgia Pacific track was finished up to the old Milner 
properties, which meantime had been reorganized as the Coal- 
burg Coal and Coke Company in 1883, and the work of de- 
veloping the mines at this point was entrusted to Major 
Tutwiler. 

" At that time I had no notion of investing personally in any 
mineral lands," said the major, "and, in fact, not for several 
years afterwards. I did not know anything about mining coal 
then, but I got me some men who did." 

By the end of two years the output of the Coalburg group was 
brought up from one hundred twenty-five tons per day to four 
thousand tons. Mines were subsequently opened under Major 
Tutwiler's supervision at Brookside, Blossburg, Cardiff, and 
Brazil. The major's twelve solid years in the engineering busi- 
ness came now into good service. " The only difference was that 

1 A quarter of a mile from the mines at Newcastle John T. Milner es- 
tablished his home. His granddaughter, Bessie, said in regard to the Milner 
home here : " It was an old-timey one-story house. No one person could 
ever have built it, I think. It rambled everywhere all over the grounds. 
There was a step up and a step down, every which way, and long corridors 
and rooms off to themselves. When I was little I used to wonder how 
things kept hot coming all the way from the kitchen to the dining-room. 
The house stood near the road. On the right-hand side grandmother had 
her rose garden, and the other flowers on the left, some oak trees, and on 
the small front veranda, which had side lights, I remember grapevines and 
wistaria. None of it was ever painted. We children always called it 
' The House.' Our playground was a stretch of uncultivated field near 
the orchard and the rose garden. Our small houses were beyond grand- 
mother's little kitchen garden. Then there were barns and a smoke house 
and the kitchen built outside." 

In 1886 John T. Milner represented Jefferson County in the State 
Senate and directed his efforts to secure a bill to encourage immigration. 

He served the State Senate until 1894, Jefferson County having a feeling 
of security in his loyalty and sensible standards. 

Miss Milner said : " He was big in little things, never fussy, but placid, 
reserved, practical. He would visualize, could see Birmingham amongst 
cow-paths. He had big powers of mind and great concentration. He was 
the same at home as elsewhere, the same to everybody. He did not keep 
his big and best ways for strangers, but for us at home. He had a fierce 
temper, but it was held well in check. He had sound and solid convictions. 
He was interested in his children and in their children; formulated their 
ideals of conduct and advocated sensible doings. He made everybody 
comfortable and happy." He died at Newcastle in 1898. His children 
living now in Birmingham are Henry Willis Milner, Mrs. C. P. Orr, and 
Mrs. James Weatherly. 



AFFAIRS OF BIRMINGHAM DISTRICT 1890-1909 439 



I now had to do underground what I'd been accustomed to 
doing above ground, that was all." 

The steady development work in this locality soon attracted 
the notice of the Sloss Iron and Steel Company, by whom the 
entire group was purchased in 1887. Major Tutwiler then en- 
tered the service of this company as superintendent of mines, 
resigning, however, in 1889, to go into business for himself. 
He continued to operate the same mines, under lease from the 
Sloss Company. Meanwhile, he had been gradually acquiring a 
large acreage of valuable coal and iron ore lands on his own 
account, so that by the time he was ready to organize the Tut- 
wiler Coal, Coke, and Iron Company, he had in hand a pretty 
fair property, and had become himself one of the strong men 
of the Birmingham District. 

Edward M. Tutwiler belongs to one of the old Virginian 
families. He was born on October 13, 1846, at Palmyra, Flu- 
vanna County, Virginia. His father, Colonel Thomas H. Tut- 
wiler, a member of the State Legislature from that county, 
served as Commonwealth's attorney for a period of twenty-five 
years. His great-grandfather Shores took part in the Revolu- 
tionary War, and as was noted in an earlier chapter, E. M. Tut- 
wiler's grandfather, Martin Tutwiler, was a soldier in the war 
of 1812, as were Sloss, Rhodes, Underwood, and a number of 
other men, whose sons and grandsons have become identified 
with the industrial development of Alabama. 

After six years at the Palmyra School, E. M. Tutwiler en- 
tered the Virginia Military Institute in 1864 and took up the 
civil engineering course. His great-uncle, Henry Tutwiler, who 
was then a prominent figure among the educators of Alabama,, 
and whose daughter is Miss Julia Tutwiler, had a professorship 
at the University of Virginia early in the eight een-thirties. Dur- 
ing the Civil War Thomas H. Tutwiler was out in the field, as 
were all the other Virginians, and young Tutwiler himself did 
not have to keep back from the firing-line. He was a member of 
that corps of Volunteer Massachusetts Infantry cadets who, two 
hundred strong, marched out in the spring of '64 at Breckin- 
ridge's call to halt the Federal's advance up the valley of Vir- 
ginia. Fifty-three of those lads fell in that battle at Newmarket. 

Young Tutwiler served at the front until Appomattox. Then 
he took up his college work where he had left off, was graduated 
in 1867, and set out to earn his living. In lieu of an engineering 



440 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



job, he tutored for a time just as Michael Tuomey had done 
before him. He tutored two healthy young grandsons of old 
Commodore Jacob Jones up in Cecil County, Maryland, "and," 
says the major, " pretty good training I got ! " In 1869 the job 
he was looking for turned up. He became a rodman in the 
engineering corps of the Lehigh and Susquehanna Railroad. 
Within the next ten or twelve years he was connected in various 
capacities from locating engineer to chief engineer with the 
Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad, the Cincinnati Southern, the 
Miami Valley Railroad, Richmond and Allegheny Railroad, and 
at length with the Georgia Pacific. It was Tutwiler who located 
the eastern end of the Chesapeake and Ohio, from Richmond 
to Newport News in the early seventies. In 1879 he served for a 
year as assistant city engineer of Cincinnati. When acting as 
division engineer in charge of the construction of the mountain 
division of the Richmond and Allegheny, from Lynchburg, 
Virginia, to Lexington and Clifton Forge, he brought down into 
his old college town its first railroad and directly afterwards he 
became associated with the Georgia Pacific Railroad, and set 
out for Alabama. 

Among the men Major Tutwiler engaged from time to time 
in the working of his mines and the Vanderbilt furnace plant 
were James Hillhouse, Sr., William Goold, and John Shannon. 

Mr. Hillhouse was an Ayrshire boy, born in Scotland in 1845. 
He entered Alabama in 1883, after having seen several years 
of service in the anthracite coal region of Pennsjdvania. He 
was connected with the Brierfield Coal and Iron Company and 
with mining work in the North Birmingham District, the Coal- 
burg region, and the Blue Creek mines in the old days when the 
Cahaba Coal Mining Company and the DeBardeleben Coal and 
Iron Company ran the country. In 1902 Mr. Hillhouse was 
appointed associate mine inspector of Alabama. He worked 
several years with the Tutwiler Company. 

.Major Tutwiler himself stayed right along with his works 
at Coalburg, lived at the camp day in and day out, a good long 
while. "We all on us thought a heap of de boss," said an old 
colored mammy, Viney Grissom by name. " When my ole man 
got hurt in de Coalburg mines, Major Tutwiler he done gib 
me house rent free. He used to 'ten' all de meetin's regular. 
When dey was strikes comin' on, you know, an' de black legs 
would all be gettin' togather out in de pines, de boss he 'd up an' 



AFFAIRS OF BIRMINGHAM DISTRICT 1890-1909 441 



gwine jine 'em. He never miss a meetin'. He follow 'em up 
close, an' he never made no fuss 'bout nothin' ; he jes' set hisself 
down in de meetin's midst white folks an black, an' lisen to 
what dey all got to say. Then he stan' up an' say what he got to 
say, an' n'ary a one, white man or nigger, could keep on strikin' 
s'long as de major he done dat away. He jes' did n't gib 'em no 
chance to quit working fo' him." 

Although the major retired from active service when he sold 
out to the Birmingham Iron Company, he remains a citizen of 
Birmingham and is interested in various lines of civic enterprise. 

Among other important companies incorporated in Alabama 
at this period (1898-1900) were the Dimmick Pipe Company, the 
Alabama Steel and Wire Company, and the Lacey-Buek Iron 
Company, the two latter making up, with subsidiary companies, 
the great Southern Iron and Steel Company of the present day. 

The Dimmick Pipe Company was incorporated in 1899 with 
a capital stock of $200,000. Its founder was J. K. Dimmick, 
known to the iron fraternity as " the dean of the cast iron pipe 
business." Just prior to his entrance into the industrial field 
of the Birmingham District, Mr. Dimmick had been acting as 
vice-president and general manager of the large pipe works at 
Anniston, Alabama, now owned by the United States Cast 
Iron Pipe and Foundry Company. He has been associated 
in pipe manufacture in seven different States ever since his early 
boyhood days when he got his first tuition in the iron and cast 
iron pipe business at a New Jersey foundry and machine com- 
pany, long before the Civil War. He is of Pennsylvania-Dutch 
stock and was born in Northampton County, March 19, 1846. 
Being left an orphan he began at a very early age to shift for 
himself. At the close of the Civil War, in which he served, 
by the way, throughout the full four years in the Union Army, 
he started South with the idea of engaging in business at Nash- 
ville, Tennessee. A story related of this trip is here given. 

" Mr. Dimmick began his journey for Nashville and stopped 
off at Cincinnati. The sight of the big Ohio River, together with 
its enormous traffic, attracted him, and he sauntered to the river 
side to satisfy his curiosity. He boarded the ferryboat that 
traversed this river between Cincinnati and its suburb across the 
way, which particularly interested him. On the other side he 
noticed on the banks of the river at Newport, Kentucky, what 
appeared to be a foundry, and also a cast iron pipe foundry as 



442 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



well. He visited the plant, and then and there was the begin- 
ning of the Gaylord Iron and Pipe Company and the first cast 
iron pipe foundry erected west of the Alleghenies. 

" That ferry ride across the river had a great deal to do with 
the career of Mr. Dimmick. It resulted in his engaging with 
the Gaylord Company and abandoning his trip to Nashville. He 
rapidly rose in his new position to the general manager of the 
entire plant, and he was still a very young man. Here he re- 
mained for many years and made a great success of this com- 
pany. In the early eighties he visited the iron district of Ala- 
bama and was then impressed with its future, and constantly 
predicted that some day the State of Alabama would rule the 
iron and steel business of this country." 

Mr. Dimmick did not, however, take a very great fancy to 
early Birmingham as a place of residence. He was one of the 
thousand and one lodgers of the old Relay House. He thought 
he had "rather not pioneer it" just then, so went back to Vir- 
ginia, where he erected a pipe plant at Radford. 

In 1889 he organized a company that took over the defunct 
cast iron pipe shop at Anniston, Alabama, and here he did some 
record-breaking work. When the amalgamation of this Anniston 
Pipe and Foundry Company and the American Pipe and Foun- 
dry Company of Chattanooga (a concern representing some four 
or five oast iron pipe plants in the South) occurred, in 1897, 
Mr. Dimmick practically became the head of the business. Two 
years later he established his plant in Birmingham and shortly 
afterwards retired from active service in the business world. 
His son, Fred Dimmick, who had been treasurer of the Dimmick 
Pipe Company at its organization in '99, stepped into his 
father's place as manager. 

In 1902 young Dimmick was elected president, when he was 
scarcely twenty-five years old. But he had grown up with the 
business, and " knew it from a to izzard." 

Fred Dimmick was born June 9, 1876, at Newport, Ken- 
tucky. He took a scientific course at the Ohio Wesleyan Uni- 
versity and directly after leaving college started in his father's 
shops at Anniston. He took hold of the practical end and mas- 
tered all the details of the pipe business from "daubing the 
cores " and " ramming the molds " to the finished product ready 
for shipment. When his chance came to captain the big plant 
he was ready. The Dimmick Pipe Company, as has been stated, 
was merely in its infancy when he became president. He has 



AFFAIRS OF BIRMINGHAM DISTRICT 1890-1909 443 



enlarged and modernized it and more than doubled its capacity 
during his seven years' management. 

Having started with a small fifteen-acre space for shops and 
yard, and a capacity for manufacturing pipe solely from three 
to thirty inches in diameter, the plant now covers seventy square 
acres and with its various new shops and modern machinery 
and devices has facilities for making pipe as large as sixty inches 
in diameter, and, in fact, the company figures on any contract 
regardless of size. It now has a capital stock of $500,000; 
carries on its pay roll the names of four hundred and fifty 
employees; has an annual output of finished product amounting 
to fifty-five thousand tons of pipe, and commands a market 
throughout the southern and western portions of the United 
States and to points in Canada, West Indies, the Hawaiian 
Islands, and the Philippines. The present-day officers of the 
company are Fred D. Dimmick, president; James Bowron, 
vice-president; 1 J. R. Rice, general sales agent; John H. Good- 
apple, secretary and treasurer. 

The Alabama Steel and Wire Company of Birmingham, Ala- 
bama, was organized and operated under the laws of Alabama by 
a special charter granted by the Legislature of 1898. Its capital 
stock of two millions was acquired shortly afterwards by the 
Alabama Steel and Wire Corporation of Hartford, Connecticut. 
The company started operations at Ensley, Alabama, during 
the Spanish War. It was the first company in the State and 
probably in the whole South to make wire rods, wire fencing 
of all kinds, and wire nails. It quickly extended operations and 
increased its mineral holdings by the purchase from time to time 
of a number of other coal and iron companies. The old Rising 
Fawn furnace of Georgia was purchased, together with an im- 
mense acreage of brown ore lands near Cartersville, and at 
length the Dade coal mine, the only coal mine in Georgia, was 
also bought. A valuable purchase to the company was a tract of 
several thousand acres of mineral lands in Blount and Etowah 
counties, originally prospected by William T. Underwood. 

It seems that in 1897, Mr. Underwood, after selling out his 
Mary Pratt Properties, had gone up into the Racoon Mountain 

1 James Bowron, former vice-president, secretary, and treasurer of the 
Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company and one of the builders of 
South Pittsburg, resigned from the Tennessee Coal Company late in the 
nineties and after a few years' rest and travel entered again into the busi- 
ness world of the South. 



444 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 

coal fields and spent three years in prospecting and proving 
up the Bynum, Carnes, and other seams which had been out- 
lined by Professor Gibson, assistant State geologist, in 1893. 
Securing possession of three thousand acres of the best of these 
coals, Mr. Underwood arranged with the Louisville and Nash- 
ville Railroad Company to extend its Murphy's Valley Branch 
from Champion some ten or twelve miles on further. 1 He 
then opened the coal mines and founded the town of Altoona. 
He operated these mines with success, developing one of the 
most valuable fields of coal in the State, and changing that little 
known region into a populous and prosperous community. He 
gave the people, both in and outside of his camp town, schools and 
churches, encouraged them to establish lodges of Odd Fellows 
and Masons, and helped them in many ways. In October of 
1904 he sold these Altoona properties to the Alabama Steel and 
Wire Company for $350,000. 

The name of the Alabama Steel and Wire Company was 
changed in the summer of 1906 to the Southern Steel Company. 

1 Mr. Underwood writes concerning this matter as follows: "In the 
spring of 1900 I had secured control of a body of coal lands in western 
Etowah and Blount counties, and wanted to open mines. I wanted it 
badly, but my lands were many miles from a railroad, and I was not able 
to command one-third of the money needed. I preferred opening mines 
on that side of my property nearest to the Alabama Great Southern rail- 
road, and took the matter up with the Southern officials, but got no en- 
couragement. I then went to Mr. M. H. Smith and found no difficulty in 
arousing his interest in it. I remember his saying to me : ' If you have the 
quality and quantity of coal you think you have, I will build you a road.' 
I then explained that I could not raise more than a third the money 
needed for opening and operating the mines, and I asked him if he could 
aid me with that. He said he did not know but would see. He did not 
keep me waiting, but acted immediately. He made me haul thirty wagon- 
loads of coal twelve miles for test purposes. He sent experts and proved 
the correctness of my statement as to quantity. He then arranged with 
a Louisville bank to loan my company many thousands of dollars, which 
we were allowed to pay off from our earnings. He began building twelve 
miles of road for us in May, 1900, and in the following October we were 
shipping coal over it. I started this business with but a few thousand 
dollars of my own, and within four years' time had paid about $80,000 
for the land, paid off the banks, and sold the property for a very large 
sum, most of which money came from outside of the State and remains 
invested in Alabama. The country through which he built the road, and 
its extension on to Atalla, had been almost a wilderness. The population 
there has now increased ten times or more, and the city is prosperous. 

" Other railroads had been asked to do this, but they did not. Had it not 
been for Mr. Smith's desire to extend the sphere of usefulness of his road, 
his comprehensive understanding of business men and their needs, as well 
as of railroads, and his personal inclination to help men with good propo- 
sitions, that section of Blount and Etowah counties would still be asleep. 
To-day, and for fifty years to come, its mines can give a living to many 
thousands of people. . . . The prosperity of the people of the Alabama 
mineral district is very largely due to the liberal policy of M. H. Smith." 



AFFAIRS OF BIRMINGHAM DISTRICT 1890-1909 445 



A few weeks later, in September, a complete reorganization of 
the company took place in New York City, when the absorption 
of two more companies occurred, namely, the Lacey-Buek Iron 
Company and the Chattanooga Iron Company. The capital 
stock of the Southern Steel Company was then said to be $25,- 
000,000. At any rate, the company at once lined up along 
with the other great coal and iron corporations of Alabama in 
point of size. 

Moses Taylor of the New York firm of Kean, Van Cortlandt 
and Company was elected president; C. P. Perin of New York, 
chairman of the board; E. T. Schnler of Gadsden, and C. E. 
Buek, vice-presidents; George H. Schnler, treasurer (but was 
succeeded later by A. R. Forsyth) ; E. F. Jones of Birmingham, 
general manager ; R. D. Carver of Birmingham, secretary ; S. R. 
Chenoweth of Birmingham, comptroller, and F. L. Reed of 
New York, assistant secretary. The general offices of the com- 
pany were then located in Birmingham. All of the principal 
leaders in the new company, excepting the Lacey-Buek people, 
were the originators of the Alabama Steel and Wire Company. 
The board of directors comprised Oakleigh Thorne, Robert B. 
Van Cortlandt, J. D. Lacey, John Bindley, H. B. Schuler, and 
Cortlandt Van Camp. The officials were also members of the 
board. 

The Lacey-Buek Iron Company, thus taken over by the 
Southern Steel Company in 1906, had been organized in 1900 
by Charles E. Buek. Associated with him as founders and 
officials of the company was J. D. Lacey of Chicago and others. 

Mr. Buek was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1859, coming 
from German stock. He started his business career in one of 
the large exporting houses of New York, and was eventually 
stationed at Richmond, Virginia, in charge of one of the branch 
offices of the New York concern. He then entered into the for- 
eign ship brokerage business, organized his own company, and 
built the first grain elevator in the South. He also engaged in 
the milling business, and later in the insurance business. He 
was general agent of the Washington Life Insurance Company 
when, late in the eighties, he located at Chattanooga, Tennessee. 
He at once became interested in the mineral regions of that 
State ; he invested in various properties, and organized the Fric- 
tionless Metal Company of Chattanooga; and from then on 
until the present day has been engaged in launching first one 



446 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



enterprise and then another. Upon his entrance into the Ala- 
bama field in 1900 and the organization of the Lacey-Buek Com- 
pany, he purchased the Trussville furnace and all its properties. 

This furnace was then a dead plant, — one of the relics of the 
boom times of that district, — " knocked out " as Fort Payne 
had been in the early nineties. Mr. Buek raised up this plant, 
and remodeled it into a two hundred-ton stack, and reconstructed 
the coke ovens. The ore properties of this concern bordered Will's 
Valley at the Crudup, historic ground. His company further 
owned brown ore properties in northwest Alabama and across 
the line in Georgia; dolomite quarries beyond North Birming- 
ham; a coal mine at Graves, near Lewisburg, and a large acre- 
age of undeveloped coal lands in the region of the Warrior River 
known as the Williams coal property. It was capitalized at 
$750,000, with a bonded debt of $500,000. Mr. Buek merged 
some of his Tennessee properties, the Chattanooga furnace plant, 
and the Estelle Mining Company (ore) into the Lacey-Buek. 

Although the Steel Company's wire mill at Ensley (Jefferson 
County) was its pioneer plant, yet its most expensive plants were 
located by the Messrs. Schuler at Alabama City, in Etowah 
County, about two miles west of Gadsden. These plants con- 
sisted in 1906 of one blast furnace (designed by John Shannon), 
six open-hearth steel furnaces, and a blooming mill. Had the 
company concentrated on its steel mill and not branched off in 
so many different directions all at once, had its officers but real- 
ized the dearth of skilled labor in the South, and the fact that 
healthy industrial growth is a matter of time, the fall over the 
precipice might, perhaps, have been avoided. 

As it was, the merger of this concern with more scattered and 
unorganized properties brought about a general state of disorder. 
There was no strong executive management, and the financial, 
executive, and operating ends soon became tangled. For a brief 
space the Southern Steel Company " was kept alive with oxygen," 
then it fell into a state of utter and complete collapse, and down 
into the pit it was plunged. 

On the 24th of October, 1907, bankruptcy proceedings were 
filed and the company was placed in the hands of receivers. 
These receivers were T. G. Bush, president of Shelby Iron Com- 
pany, Edgar Adler, J. O. Thompson, and E. G. Chandler. The 
receivers discontinued the operation of all plants and proceeded 
to collect the outstanding accounts of the company. In Feb- 



AFFAIRS OF BIRMINGHAM DISTRICT 1890-1909 447 



ruary, 1908, the receivers were succeeded by trustees elected by 
the creditors, who were W. H. Hassinger, T. S. Kyle, and John 
E. Morris. The bondholders and collateral trust note holders 
of this company formed a committee on reorganization, with 
headquarters in New York. This committee was composed of 
James T. Woodward (president of the Hanover National Bank), 
chairman; Otto T. Bannard, Franklin Q. Brown, Robert B. 
Van Cortlandt, Walter T. Rosen, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and W. 
P. G-. Harding, president of First National Bank of Birmingham, 
Alabama. 

Frequent conferences held between this committee and the 
trustees resulted in the promulgation of a plan, dated May 15, 
1908, of reorganization, under which the reorganization com- 
mittee proposed to raise the sum of $3,500,000 for paying off the 
pressing indebtedness of the subsidiary companies composing the 
Southern Steel Company, and for rehabilitating the plants and 
providing working capital. This plan provided for the organ- 
ization of a new company for the issue of new bonds to take the 
place of the old, and for new preferred and common stock, the 
old stockholders to receive a percentage of their former holdings 
in new stock, and the creditors of the old company were to re- 
ceive fifty per cent of their debts in first mortgage bonds of the 
new company and seventy-five per cent in preferred stock in the 
new company. 

This plan of reorganization was declared effective on February 
15, 1908, and the properties of the old company were sold at 
bankrupt sale early in 1909, and were bid in by the reorganiza- 
tion committee. The company at once took hold of the proper- 
ties and elected W. H. Hassinger president, with the following 
board of directors: James T. Woodward, Cornelius Vanderbilt, 
A. W. Thompson, K. K. McLaren, F. Q. Brown, R. B. Van 
Cortlandt, W. T. Rosen, C. S. Boughton, W. P. G. Harding, 
R. T. Wilson, W. W. Miller, W. H. Hassinger, W. B. Denton, 
C. A. Grenfell, T. S. Kyle, D. G. Boissevain. 

Said W. P. G. Harding in regard to the reconstruction : " The 
reorganization committee was fortunate in securing as its at- 
torney Mr. W. W. Miller of the law firm of Hornblower, Miller, 
and Potter. To his ability and untiring energy the success of 
the plan is to a large extent due. Messrs. Augustus Benners and 
E. K. Campbell of Birmingham representing the petitioning 
creditors and the trustees are also entitled to much credit for 



448 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



their part in formulating a plan that received the applause of 
the creditors." 

The new company was incorporated under the laws of New 
Jersey. Its name was changed to the Southern Iron and Steel 
Company and shares in its stock were first listed on the New 
York curb July 13, 1909. 

Following close upon the heels of the recent panic the reor- 
ganization of this company created a stir throughout the busi- 
ness world not only of the South but of the entire country. It 
is one of the greatest events in modern industrial history, and, 
certainly, the most remarkable resurrection of a bankrupt con- 
cern in recent financial records of the United States. 

Chief among the Birmingham men becoming interested in 
reviving the dying concern was, as has been mentioned, Mr. 
Harding, the president of the First National Bank of Birming- 
ham. W. P. G. Harding is a native Alabamian, having been 
born in Greene County, Alabama. His father was Horace Hard- 
ing who, with Colonel Alfred L. Rives, was one of the well- 
known civil engineers of early Alabama, and acted as general 
manager of the Mobile and Ohio Railroad in the service of the 
Confederate government. Later he served as superintendent of 
the Alabama and Chattanooga Railroad (now the Alabama Great 
Southern), and at length became one of the government en- 
gineers identified with the Warrior River work. W. P. G. Hard- 
ing received his M. A. degree at the University of Alabama, 1881, 
and shortly afterward started work in the old Tuskaloosa Bank 
of J. H. Fitts and Company (now the City National Bank). 

In 1886 young Harding came up to Birmingham and took 
the position of assistant cashier of the old Berney National Bank, 
and in 1894 became cashier. As paying-teller he saw " some 
arduous service," for it fell to him to put up regularly the pay 
roll for all the employees of a good many of the old-time com- 
panies, among them the great DeBardeleben Coal and Iron Com- 
pany and the Central Georgia Railroad. In 1896 Mr. Harding 
resigned to take the place of vice-president of the First National 
Bank, and in 1902 he succeeded N. E. Barker as president, which 
position he has held continuously since. In adition to his recent 
active interest in affairs of the Southern Iron and Steel Com- 
pany, Mr. Harding is a director of the Birmingham Railway 
Light and Power Company, and has served as a director of the 
Bessemer Coal, Iron, and Land Company, and as trustee in bank- 



AFFAIRS OF BIRMINGHAM DISTRICT 1890-1909 449 



ruptcy in conjunction with A. W. Smith and J ames Bonneyman, 
for the Birmingham Coal and Iron Company. 

The officers elected in the reorganized Southern Iron and Steel 
Company, all veterans in the coal and iron business, are as fol- 
lows : W. H. Hassinger, president ; Frank B. Keiser, vice-presi- 
dent and general manager; John Y. Brooks, general superin- 
tendent of rod mill; Joseph A. Durfee, general superintendent 
of steel plant and furnace ; George P. Thornton, general super- 
intendent of ore mines ; James E. Strong, general superintendent 
of coal mines in Alabama; H. F. Geismer, Chattanooga, dis- 
trict manager, comprising Rising Fawn furnace, Cole City, Dun- 
lap, and Chattanooga furnace ; Charles A. Moff ett, chief engineer ; 
B. F. Tyler, purchasing agent in charge of commissaries ; H. H. 
Knight, traffic manager; and Harry Lacey, chief clerk. Six of 
these officers — President Hassinger, Mr. Keiser, Mr. Strong, 
Mr. Geismer, Mr. Moffett, and Mr. Tyler — were former officials 
in the Republic Iron and Steel Company, and three of the new 
group — Mr. Brooks, Mr. Durfee, and Mr. Thornton — formerly 
served with the Colorado Iron and Fuel Company, and were also 
identified with various companies of the Birmingham District. 

William H. Hassinger was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, 
in May, 1863, of German parentage. His father, Jacob Has- 
singer, emigrated from Germany early in the fifties and was first 
editor of a German paper in New Orleans, and later, president 
of the Germania Savings Bank and Trust Company of that city. 
W. H. Hassinger graduated in 1885 from the Van Rensalaer 
Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. His first position was 
that of chief chemist with the old Spang Steel and Iron Com- 
pany of Pittsburg, the first people, by the way, to make uniform 
soft steel for boiler plate. Young Hassinger next served in the 
same capacity with the Youngstown Steel Company of Ohio. 
In the spring of 1887 he ventured into the Birmingham District, 
and, with his associates, among them D. M. Forker, he built the 
Alabama rolling mill at Gate City and began the manufacture 
of merchant iron. He also became identified, as has previously 
been stated, with the original Henderson Steel plant. 

The Alabama rolling mill was in continuous and successful 
operation throughout the periods of depression under Mr. Has- 
singer's management until 1898, when the concern was sold to 
the Republic Iron and Steel Company. Mr. Hassinger was then 
placed by the directors of the great company in charge of all of 

29 



450 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



its Alabama properties as vice-president and district manager. 
He had then under his management the rolling mills, the Thomas 
furnace of the Pioneer Mining and Manufacturing Company, 
together with its numerous coal and iron mines and quarries. 
In 1906 Mr. Hassinger resigned from the Republic Company to 
manage his own growing business. Two years later he was 
nominated by the creditors of the Southern Steel Company as 
chairman of the board of trustees in bankruptcy, as has been 
mentioned, and in 1908 was elected to his present office. 

The Southern Iron and Steel Company's general superintend- 
ent of coal mines, James Edward Strong, has had an interesting 
career. He is the son of an English mining engineer, and he 
first came to the Birmingham District in 1884. He was born at 
Plymouth, England (1864), and after attending the Plymouth 
schools was taught the trade of carpenter and joiner. During 
the seventies and eighties the mineral region of Alabama was 
advertised all over Great Britain. Drawn by the romantic de- 
scriptions, young Strong came across to the States and made at 
once for the coal mines of the Birmingham District. "Bir- 
mingham was not then the place I pictured," said he. 

At Pratt mines Colonel Llewellyn Johns, then chief mining 
engineer under Colonel Ensley, gave the English youth his first 
job, — that of a carpenter in the company shop. He shortly 
afterwards made him assistant surveyor of the mines. When 
Johns resigned from the office to go with the DeBardeleben Coal 
and Iron Company he took James Strong with him, and gave 
him the position of assistant superintendent of the Blue Creek 
division. While working here young Strong saved enough out 
of his salary to resign in 1888 and take a two-years' course in 
mining and civil engineering at Lehigh University. He then 
returned to Alabama, and in 1890 entered the Cahaba Coal 
Company (of which Truman H. Aldrich was then president) as 
superintendent of mines of the Excelsior Coal Company division 
at Gurnee. Shortly after this he went to Europe and to South 
Africa to investigate foreign methods of mining, and returned 
to Alabama to his old position. When the Gurnee mines were 
closed down in the strike of 1894, Mr. Strong was appointed 
general manager of the Montana Coal and Coke Company, in 
which W. J. Gurnee of New York had controlling interest. He 
remained in the far Northwest until 1899; he then tried Vir- 
ginia for a time, serving as mining superintendent with the 



AFFAIRS OF BIRMINGHAM DISTRICT 1890-1909 451 



Virginia Coal and Iron Company. Late in 1900 Mr. Strong 
returned to Alabama, accepting the position of mining superin- 
tendent with the Republic Iron and Steel Company. He became 
general superintendent, and then, in 1906, resigned to take the 
office of superintendent of both coal and ore properties of the 
Southern Steel Company, then the Alabama Steel and Wire 
Company. 

The company's properties, in addition to the Gadsden plant, 
are located in three States, — Alabama, Georgia, and Tennessee. 
President Hassinger is preparing to remodel and put in opera- 
tion all the various plants. He will build a modern wire and 
rod mill at Gadsden, adjoining the company's steel plant, as 
well as finishing plants for the consumption of the mill's prod- 
ucts. Although Birmingham will continue to be headquarters 
of the company, the manufacturing operations will be concen- 
trated at Gadsden. 

The reorganized Southern Iron and Steel Company has been 
thoroughly financed. Its capital stock is $27,000,000 ($7,000,000 
preferred, $10,000,000 common stock, and $10,000,000 bonds). 

To again trace back to the year 1899 another important event 
comes to pass, — the formation of the Sloss-Sheffield Steel and 
Iron Company, the second largest producer of pig iron in the 
Birmingham District. This great company was formed in Au- 
gust (1899) by a consolidation of the Sloss Iron and Steel Com- 
pany, with twelve other smaller concerns, including Lady Ensley 
Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company, Franklin Mining Company, 
Lady Ensley Furnace Company, American Coal and Coke Com- 
pany, Loss Creek Coal Company, Walker County Coal Company, 
Russellville Ore Company, Hamilton Creek Ore Company, Col- 
bert Iron Company, Philadelphia Furnace Company, Miss Emma 
Ore Mining Company, and North Alabama Furnace Company. 

Certain of the various and widely scattered holdings of this 
consolidated company have their origin, as has been shown, in 
territorial Alabama. Linked with the company's history are the 
names of Andrew Jackson's men, Major William Russell, and the 
old machinist David Hanby. Later are those of several of the 
pioneer prospectors and big mining men of the Birmingham Dis- 
trict, including Major Tom Peters, John T. Milner, H. F. DeBar- 
deleben, T. H. Aldrich, J. W. Sloss, Mark Potter, Enoch Ensley, 
Edward M. Tutwiler, and Milton H. Smith. In 1909 this com- 



452 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



pany owns about sixty-five thousand acres of coal lands, fifty- 
three thousand acres of ore lands, seven blast furnaces, with raw 
material developed sufficient to supply them all. The company 
has outstanding $2,000,000 worth of six per cent bonds, $2,000,- 
000 in four and a half per cent bonds, $6,700,000 of preferred 
stock, and $10,000,000 of common stock. The interest on the bonds 
and seven per cent on the preferred stock has always been paid 
since issued, and since 1905 dividends on the common stock at 
the rate of five per cent have been paid. Of the company's seven 
blast furnaces, four are located in the neighborhood of Birming- 
ham and three in the Sheffield District. It has twelve fully 
developed coal mines, ore mines on Red Mountain, and a large 
brown ore development near Russellville, Alabama. After the 
expenditure of a large sum and the payment of dividends on the 
stock, the company has accumulated a surplus of about $3,000,000. 

The records of the old Sloss Furnace Company, parent stock 
of the Sloss-Sheffield, and the account of its purchase and re- 
organization in 1886-87 as the Sloss Iron and Steel Company, 
have been detailed, together with the administrations of Joseph 
F. Johnston and Thomas Seddon. Sol Haas succeeded to the 
presidency of the company in 1896, upon the death of Mr. Sed- 
don. His assistant and manager of mines was Truman H. 
Aldrich. 

It seems that Mr. Aldrich, after his essay into politics, had 
returned to the coal business as a sailor to the sea. He had with 
P. B. Thomas organized the Southern Mining Company and 
opened and operated the mines at Hargrove. These he sold in 
1903 to D. Pierson, Jr., and associates. While in the service of 
the Sloss-Sheffield Company, Mr. Aldrich frequently acted as 
president, and on August 3, 1900, he was elected as acting presi- 
dent, resigning in 1901, when a fourth reorganization was ef- 
fected and E. O. Hopkins became president. Mr. Aldrich then 
got together a large amount of coal lands in the lower part of 
Jefferson County, which he named the Virginia mines, and sold 
them later to the Alabama Steel and Wire Company. The fol- 
lowing year he organized, with his son, T. H. Aldrich, Jr. (a 
Perdue University graduate, class of '99), the Hillabee Cold 
Mining Company in Tallapoosa County, which in 1909 he is still 
operating. In 1905 Mr. Aldrich, together with P. B. Thomas, 
repurchased his first coal mine, — the old Montevallo mines, — 
which he had sold to his brother, W. F. Aldrich. He is to-day 



AFFAIRS OF BIRMINGHAM DISTRICT 1890-1909 453 



president of the Montevallo Coal Company, and is operating those 
well-known mines, old landmarks of the coal business of Ala- 
bama, on a larger scale than they were ever operated before. 

Confronted still with a large debt, the acquisition of vast new 
properties that, raw and crude, called aloud for capital, the 
Sloss-Sheffield Company had stiff problems up before its board. 
The blast furnaces, built by Colonel Sloss, had been pulled down 
by Mr. Seddon and new ones put up. But by 1901 they were 
far from making good. Another crisis loomed ahead of the 
company. John C. Maben, who for a long while had been 
chairman of the executive committee, and who had been actively 
interested in the company ever since the year of its organization 
in 1887, was elected president in May, 1902. Mr. Maben was 
no more of a coal and iron man than Tom Seddon had been. 
But he had proved on Wall Street that he was a financier. When 
he was elected to the presidency the officers and directors were : 
first vice-president, Joseph Bryan; second vice-president, E. W. 
Rucker ; secretary and treasurer, J. W. McQueen ; auditor, E. J. 
Thomas, Jr. Directors: J. C. Maben, Joseph Bryan, E. W. 
Rucker, W. H. Goadby, H. 0. Seixas, A. B. Andrews, Moses Van 
Cortlandt, John A. Rutherford, Richard Mortimer, George Par- 
sons, W. G. Oakman, A. H. Larkin, and W. E. Strong. 

As to John Campbell Maben, he is a Virginian, like Tom 
Seddon. Of Scotch-English stock, he is descended on his 
mother's side from the early iron maker of the American colo- 
nies, Lieutenant-Governor Alexander Spotswood, called by Colo- 
nel Byrd the " Tubal Cain of Virginia." 1 

Mr. Maben's father, John Maben, was a Cotton and tobacco 
merchant of Richmond, Virginia. He had married Elizabeth 
Moore Campbell of Petersburg, great-granddaughter of Cath- 
erine Spotswood Moore, who was the daughter of the distin- 
guished iron-master and administrator of Colonial Virginia. 
The Maben home, like so many of the old Virginia estates, car- 
ried an English name; it was called after Horace Walpole's 
" Strawberry Hill." Here, on December 31, 1839, John Camp- 
bell Maben was born. The family moved later to Richmond, 

1 Records of the early iron works at Germanna, established by Governor 
Spotswood, are preserved in the Westover manuscripts in the Virginia 
archives. They make the first chapter of that State's history of iron 
making, but are still unpublished. Some of the products of Spotswood's 
historic iron works are still preserved by several of his descendants, living 
in old Orange County. 



454 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



and the boy was educated in the public schools of that city, and 
there prepared for Princeton, entering that university in 1859. 
Just as Benjamin Hawkins, almost a century before (the first 
man to be identified with industrial Alabama in territorial days), 
had left Princeton, to enter the army of the American Revolu- 
tion, so young Maben also left Princeton before his graduation 
for the battlefield. Enlisting in the ranks of the Richmond 
Greys, Twelfth Virginia Regiment, which was the first company 
to enter the service of the State of Virginia, young Maben was, 
after two years' service, commissioned as captain. Assigned to 
duty on the staff of the First Army Corps of northern Virginia, 
he served in the field until his parole at Appomattox. After 
the war, finding Richmond but a bankrupt place and holding 
out no fruit for enterprise, Captain Maben set forth for New 
York in 1868 and went into the banking business, and from 
that into the Wall Street office of Lancaster, Brown, and Com- 
pany. This firm, officered by Virginians, dealt mainly in South- 
ern affairs, and turned the currents of influence and capital in 
its control to force new life into the prostrate Southern country. 
It started the construction of the Mississippi levees, and built or 
partly built in the South numerous railroads. 

In 1871 Mr. Maben married Miss Merchant, the daughter 
of General Charles S. Merchant of the United States Army. 1 
While Captain Maben and his bride were abroad on a European 
tour his firm failed in the panic of 1873. Captain Maben re- 
turned, settled up the affairs with his firm, and began business 
alone. He was one of the original projectors of the Richmond 
and West Point Terminal Railway and Warehouse Company 
(now the Southern Railway Company), and remained a director 
of that company until its reorganization after the disastrous 
panic of 1893, and was one of a committee of three selected by 
the stockholders to look after its reorganization. He was also 
director in many other companies. He was on the board of the 
Georgia Pacific Railway at the time it was being built from At- 
lanta to Greenville, Mississippi, and aided materially in financ- 
ing the enterprise. He also invested in coal properties in West 
Virginia, and became a stockholder and director in various 
manufacturing and commercial enterprises, among them the 

1 General Merchant was in the first class which was graduated from the 
West Point Military Academy and was a conspicuous figure of the United 
States Artillery Corps, having been active in the construction of the 
coast defences at Savannah and Old Point Comfort, Virginia. 



AFFAIRS OF BIRMINGHAM DISTRICT 1890-1909 455 



Lanston Monotype Machine Company. By the eighties he had 
accumulated some means of his own and commanded a certain 
degree of capital and influence on Wall Street. His taking stock 
in the affairs of the Sloss Furnace Company brought the in- 
terests of a number of solid men to bear on its welfare. As has 
been mentioned, when Mr. Maben was elected president, the 
Sloss-Sheffield Company was facing a crisis similar, almost, to 
that of Seddon's day. With thirty-four years' experience on 
Wall Street back of him, President Maben brought to the hand- 
ling of the concern a sharp-pointed memory for figures and 
statistics and a firm grip on the financiering end. One of his 
first steps was to place the practical furnaceman, John Shannon, 
in charge of the blast furnace department. Jones G. Moore be- 
came manager of mines. Vice-president McQueen had charge 
of the contracting and sales departments and handled the gen- 
eral affairs of the company. 

" I 'm not a technical man," says Captain Maben, " and I 
don't pretend to be one. I 've no need to be one. All I want to 
take care of are these cost sheets right here and look after re- 
sults, and see that results show up. That 's what I 'm here for. 
Why should I be a mining engineer or a coal and ore expert? 
Jones G-. Moore takes care of my mines. Why should I need 
to learn how to build and run a blast furnace ? John Shannon 
takes care of my furnaces. If anything is wrong it shows right 
here in these reports, and I call up the men in charge and see 
what 's the matter and have it corrected. That, in my opinion, 
is the only way to run a company." 

By the close of 1905, the company's statements showed that 
"it stood without any floating indebtedness and was paying 
five per cent dividends on common stock and had paid seven per 
cent on preferred since August, 1899. Its resources are said 
to aggregate $21,000,000, with a surplus and working capital 
amounting to $2,500,000, with its annual net earnings increased 
over $1,400,000." 

The general superintendent of the company's furnaces, John 
Shannon, has worked up through every phase and condition 
of the furnaceman's trade. His father was the English foun- 
dryman, James Shannon, so long connected with the Birmingham 
District, and John Shannon was born and bred to the trade. 
He began as a little water boy back in Colonel Sloss's time (in 
1878) ; his next job at old Oxmoor was off-bearing brick from 



456 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



the yard; then he got work in the stock house there. Later he 
went up to Alice, where at the battery of coke ovens " daubing 
doors " was his end of the work. At Sloss and at Mary Pratt 
it was "cinder-snapping," with terms at the public school every 
now and then. Mr. Underwood also employed the boy as ship- 
ping clerk at Mary Pratt and assistant to the bookkeeper, young 
Reuben Edwards, Giles Edwards' son. The position of labor 
foreman at the Bessemer furnaces was next gotten by Shannon ; 
then that of foundryman and assistant superintendent to Llew- 
ellyn Johns, where he was given sole charge of the Little Belle 
blast furnace. Here was where young Shannon had his first 
show. The Little Belle having but one engine and three stoves 
did not average more than sixty tons per day output. John 
Shannon created a sensation in Bessemer when he broke the 
Little Belle's record with a ninety-two ton output. And he con- 
tinued to keep the furnace up to a seventy-five-ton average 
daily. After this the eye of " Boss " DeBardeleben was on him. 
When DeBardeleben absorbed the Eureka Company he appointed 
John Shannon superintendent of the Eureka furnaces, and the 
young man returned to Oxmoor where he had begun as a barefooted 
water boy. He made good there and one promotion followed an- 
other. In 1893, after the deal between the Tennessee Company 
and the DeBardeleben Coal and Iron Company, John Shannon 
was detailed by DeBardeleben to the Big Four at Ensley. 
These furnaces were not then behaving well. The output of 
each did not average more than one hundred and twenty tons 
per day. Returning from Wall Street, "broke," DeBardeleben 
decided to reform the Ensley stacks. So he engaged John Shan- 
non, who worked night and day until he set things to rights. 
He overhauled the engines and boilers; watched the stacks 
pretty close, and within precisely two weeks the output of the 
two furnaces he had in operation increased to two hundred 
tons per day. DeBardeleben was elected general manager and 
Shannon got a raise. Early in the winter of '95 Mr. Barton 
transferred Shannon to Alice, and made him superintendent 
there. It was on the Alice record that Shannon was promoted 
by General Manager McCormack to Barton's place as superin- 
tendent of Ensley, in 1898, when Mr. Barton returned to Eng- 
land. In the following year Mr. Shannon accepted a position 
with the Southern Steel Company as general superintendent of 
construction. He designed and built his first furnace, the Schuler 



AFFAIRS OF BIRMINGHAM DISTRICT 1890-1909 457 



plant at Alabama City. Mr. Shannon was also engaged aa 
consulting engineer by the Tutwiler Coal and Iron Company, 
and by the Sloss- Sheffield Steel and Iron Company, where he 
became, at the expiration of his contract with the Southern 
Steel Company, as has been noted, general superintendent of 
furnaces. He has in 1909 under his management the seven blast 
furnaces of the company at Birmingham, Sheffield, and Florence, 
and a regiment of twelve hundred men. 

The twelve coal mines of the company are under the direction 
of Jones Gr. Moore. They are located upon productive and 
easily worked seams. Those in Jefferson County are at Coal- 
burg, Brazil, New Found, Cardiff, and Blossburg on the line of 
the Southern Railway. The Coalburg properties, the oldest mines 
of the company, were originally owned by John T. Milner and 
developed by Edward M. Tutwiler. They lie twelve miles west 
of Birmingham. Still farther west are the mines at Brookside, 
Brazil, and Cardiff. Mr. Moore has seen more than twenty 
years' service in the coal business of the Birmingham District. 
His work in connection with the Pratt Coal and Iron Company 
under Enoch Ensley has been noted. He remained in the Pratt 
mines division after the merger with the Tennessee Company, 
and during the strike of 1894 handled his work with a special 
degree of efficiency. He took a hand in politics for a time, and 
served as State senator from Bibb and Shelby counties. He 
left the Tennessee Company to become president of the Birming- 
ham Southern. In 1906 Mr. Moore entered the Sloss- Sheffield 
Company, succeeding Thomas C. Culverhouse as manager of 
mines. 

The brown ore mines of the company were acquired, as 
has been related, in 1899, from the Russellville Ore Company, 
the Franklin Mining Company, the Hamilton Creek Ore Com- 
pany, and the Lady Ensley Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company. 
The fields are located about twenty miles from the furnaces 
of the company in the Sheffield District. The company has two 
extensive limestone quarries, one at North Birmingham and 
the other near Russellville. The hard red ore mines are located 
in Jefferson County. One of the most extensive of this class of 
mines is at the Sloss, Alabama, on Red Mountain, seven milea 
south of Birmingham. Two slopes tap a vein of ore from 
twelve to fifteen feet in thickness and the output is twenty-five 
hundred tons daily. The mines were opened by the old Sloss 



458 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



Company under John David Hanby's direction and have been 
worked steadily for twenty-seven years. Captain Hanby, whose 
connection with the iron business dates from the old Irondale 
furnace days, is still superintendent at this point. The other 
ore mines are located at Irondale and Champion. The Champion 
mines in Blount County, discovered by old Hanby in Andrew 
Jackson's day, are owned jointly by the Sloss and Tennessee 
companies. 

The entrance of James W. McQueen into the Birmingham 
District occurred in 1890. The incident that led to his start 
with the Sloss people, during " Tom " Seddon's administration, 
has been related in an earlier chapter. 

Although born in South Carolina, at " Society Hill," April 
15, 1866, James W. McQueen was reared in Alabama. He 
started out in life just as M. H. Smith, George B. McCormack, 
and Don Bacon had done, as a telegraph operator. He was first 
in the employ of the Alabama Great Southern and was stationed 
at Eutaw, Alabama. In 1886 he became joint agent for the 
Alabama Great Southern Railroad and the Cahaba Coal Com- 
pany, officered by T. H. Aldrich and Colonel Cadle, and was 
stationed at Blocton and at Woodstock where Giles Edwards and 
his family lived. In April, 1899, Mr. McQueen married Lydia, 
a daughter of Giles Edwards, and shortly afterwards removed 
to Birmingham, and entered the ranks of the Sloss Iron and 
Steel Company. Young McQueen had charge at first of the 
transportation and shipping interests ; then he was auditor until 
1896, when he was promoted to the position of secretary and 
treasurer. From that date he has been in entire charge of the 
contracting and sales of pig iron. The contracts for all heavy 
purchases, and every sale in the company's history for twelve 
years, have been engineered by Mr. McQueen. Since 1902, 
when he became vice-president of the Sloss-Sheffield, Mr. Mc- 
Queen has frequently served in administrative capacity and in 
Mr. Maben's absence he has had the control of the company. 
Owing to his long term of service, nearly twenty years all told, 
Mr. McQueen has a more intimate knowledge of the company's 
affairs than possibly any other of its officers. His good judg- 
ment, progressive attitude, and practical ability have helped 
his company keep to the front straight along. It is frequently 
said : " He is the company's main influence and strongest force." 

Like the first president of the Sloss Company, Joseph F. 




James W. McQueen 
Vice-President of the Sloss-Sheffield Steel and Iron Company 



AFFAIRS OF BIRMINGHAM DISTRICT 1890-1909 459 



Johnston, James W. McQueen is descended from old Scotch 
fighting stock. His father was General John McQueen, one of 
the most prominent of the Southern statesmen, and his mother 
was Miss Sarah Pickens, a daughter of Colonel Joseph A. 
Pickens and granddaughter of General Andrew Pickens of 
Revolutionary fame, and also closely related to the Calhoun 
family of South Carolina. General John McQueen served as 
United States representative from South Carolina from 1847 
until 1860, and it was here he gained the sobriquet of " Honest 
John/' When South Carolina seceded, General McQueen was 
elected to the Confederate Congress and served in that body 
until the end of the war. It was at this time he came to have such 
long and intimate association with Secretary Seddon, the father 
of Thomas Seddon, second president of the Sloss Company, and 
this circumstance led indirectly to " Tom " Seddon' s interest in 
young James McQueen. 

General John McQueen died in 1867, at Society Hill, when 
his youngest son, James, was barely seventeen months old. As 
his home was directly in the route of Sherman's raid, his every 
possession was swept away. His widow removed to her former 
home in Alabama and brought up her three boys in the face of 
many hardships. 

The McQueen family history has points of significant interest 
from a general historical viewpoint. Deseent from Robert Bruce, 
king of Scotland, has been directly traced, and General John 
McQueen was, through his relationship to the McDonalds, the 
twenty-first in direct line, as the family record indicates. Gen- 
eral McQueen's father was Colonel James McQueen, who was- 
born in the Isle of Skye, Scotland, and was of the McQueens of 
Carryborough and McDonalds of the " Isles." He came to the 
United States in 1765 with a large colony of Scotch royalists 
who settled in Robeson County, North Carolina. His wife was 
Ann McRae, and their home, known as " Queensdale," was one 
of the most celebrated country seats of North Carolina. 1 

1 The incident that is perhaps of widest historical import in connection 
with the McQueen family records is that relating to the illustrious Flora 
McDonald who saved the life of Charles Edward, the last of the Stuarts 
and heir to the Scottish crown. Mrs. Sarah Pickens McQueen has given 
for this record the following sketch of Flora McDonald : " She was one of 
the bravest women of her day, and espousing the cause of the Chevaliers, 
she dared what stout, brawny men feared to do. She went to a cave where 
she learned the Prince was in hiding after the terrible defeat of Culloden, 
when she knew a large price was set on his head, and there she concocted 



460 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



a disguise for him. She started home and was met by a party of militia, 
of whom her stepfather was in command. They arrested her, but later 
she was released and given a passport for herself, her cousin, Neil Mc- 
Eachin (purporting to be her man-servant), and an Irish woman, Betty 
Burke. She and Neil McEachin returned to the cave at night, and the 
Prince was arrayed in a quilted petticoat and coarse printed gown and 
mantle of dun camel et peculiar to the Irish peasant girl. The night was 
dark and stormy and they had to wait many hours before they could put 
off in their boat. After a tempestuous voyage, fatigue, and exposure, 
they landed at Skye, near the home of Alexander McDonald. The Prince 
was left in hiding until nightfall and then brought to the house of McDonald 
where he spent the first peaceful night since his wanderings and exile 
began, and shortly afterwards embarked on a little vessel for France. 

"Flora was arrested on the charge of treason and put in the tower in 
London, where she remained from December to June. The Prince of Wales, 
Frederick, fell in love with her while she was in prison, and wanted to 
marry her. Through his influence she was pardoned, and, as she remarked, 
'I went to London to be hanged and came home in a chaise of six.' She 
afterwards married her cousin Sir Alexander McDonald of the Isles, and 
she and her husband immigrated to North Carolina about Revolutionary 
days and settled on Cape Fear at Cross Creek, the site of the present town 
of Fayetteville, in Cumberland County. When hostilities arose between 
this and the mother country and all able-bodied men of certain age were 
required to bear arms, Sir Alexander was anxious to espouse the American 
cause, but Flora's sympathies were loyal to the Crown, and they took 
ship and returned to their native land. Flora died in 1790 two years after 
the death of Charles Edward. She was buried in a shroud made of the 
sheets between which the Prince had slept in that night at the McDonald 
home which she had kept fifty years. 

" Her half-sister, Flora McDonald, married James McQueen of ' Carry- 
borough,' the grandfather of James W. McQueen of Alabama. It was cus- 
tomary among the early Scotch to name a son or daughter for both grand- 
parents, provided grandparents bore similar names; hence, these half 
sisters were both called Flora, a name which is still perpetuated in the 
McQueen family." 



CHAPTER XXVII 

PRESENT DAY AFFAIRS OF BIRMINGHAM DISTRICT {continued). 
HISTORY OF THE T. C. I. (continued). ORGANIZATION OF 
ALABAMA CONSOLIDATED COAL AND IRON COMPANY 

Building of First Steel Mill. Mission of Paschal Shook to steel making 
centers. Construction of open-hearth furnaces recommended. Forma- 
tion of Alabama Steel and Shipbuilding Company. General Rufus N. 
Rhodes elected on board of directors. First cast of steel made Thanks- 
giving Day, 1899. Bulls and bears again on the rampage over T. C. I. 
Stock. Resignation of Nat Baxter, Jr. Don H. Bacon of Minnesota 
elected president. Personnel of new directorate of T. C. I. Record of 
Mr. Bacon's service in northwest. Summary of his work in Birming- 
ham. His appointment of Edwin Ball as manager of department of 
ore mines and quarries. Interesting career of Mr. Ball. Mining ex- 
periences in Lake Superior country. Description of red ore mines of 
Tennessee Company. General plan of reconstruction. Mr. Ball places 
mines on up-to-date level. Introduction of modern machinery. Incor- 
poration of Alabama Consolidated Coal and Iron Company. Men 
associated in enterprise. Properties taken over. Pioneer builders and 
past associations. Biographical sketch of T. G. Bush. Affairs of 
historic old Shelby Iron Company. President Bush's connection with 
Clifton Iron Company. Calhoun and Talladega County interests. Back- 
ward glance over traveled roads. Introduction of Fred M. Jackson. 
Sketch of Standard Coal Company. Description of Alabama Consoli- 
dated holdings. Colonel Bush resigns presidency. Review of first 
administration. Spectacular career of Joseph H. Hoadley. Formation 
of International Power Company. A practical iron man assumes man- 
agement of company. Guy R. Johnson enters Alabama field. Brief 
review of Mr. Johnson's work in Virginia, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, 
Ohio, and Illinois. Administration of his Alabama Company. 

f< TI the Carnegie people and all the rest can make first-class 
I steel out of our iron, — why shouldn't we?" became the 
JL question uppermost in the minds of the officers of the 
Tennessee Company as orders for their basic iron kept coming 
in from the great steel companies of the North. Furthermore, 
the Tennessee Company was beginning to face the fact that 
instead of continuing to market their raw materials indefinitely 
they must finish their products. Having now acquired by both 
building and purchase seventeen blast furnaces, — thirteen in 
Alabama and four in Tennessee, — all of which were fed by their 
own coal and iron ore mines, the question of marketing the tre- 
mendous amount of pig iron turned out by the furnaces became, 



462 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



according to Colonel Shook, " as serious as was the marketing of 
the large amount of fine or slack coal in the early days. While 
the coke ovens and blast furnaces solved the question of making 
use of the fine coal, another difficulty of greater proportions was 
marketing the pig iron. The only solution of this question was 
to convert the pig iron into steel." 

The great success achieved by George B. McCormack and A. E. 
Barton in the manufacture of Alice basic iron at once, as has 
been stated, pointed out the way. 

President Baxter instructed young Paschal Shook to visit 
the various steel works in the Pittsburg District, Cleveland, and 
St. Louis, to which the Tennessee Company was then selling 
basic iron, and ascertain the practices and methods in vogue and 
just what precise percentage of the T. C. I. product was used in 
the furnaces there. 

In young Mr. Shook's report, March 2, 1896, he states : " At 
the Homestead Works of the Carnegie Company, they are using 
our Alice basic pig in identically the same manner as that of 
their own manufacture and in about the same proportions. . . . 
Our iron gives them an acceptable mixture, in that the silicon 
being exceptionally low, it enables them to use to advantage 
their off-basic or off-Bessemer irons, containing from one to one 
and one half per cent silicon. The same remarks apply to all 
other users of our product." 

This report contained further suggestions and recommenda- 
tions of interest and value to the company and strongly ad- 
vocated the construction of open-hearth furnaces by the Tennessee 
Company. In this year pig iron was bringing a very low price, 
— six dollars per ton at the furnace. The manufacture of 
steel was recognized to be more than ever essential for the welfare 
of the entire district. At that very time the Birmingham rolling 
mills had under construction two small open-hearth furnaces 
designed to run almost exclusively on scrap. The experiments 
of the Henderson Company already alluded to had been fol- 
lowed from time to time by many other ventures not one of which 
proved as technically successful as had the Henderson process, 
until the Birmingham rolling mills made their first cast of 
steel, July 24, 1897. " That was a great day," observed B. F. 
Roden, "a big crowd and a lot of excitement. Men from all 
over the country gathered together to watch that steel made. 
I remember how some of the men grabbed up the steel ingots 



AFFAIRS OF BIRMINGHAM DISTRICT 463 



before they were cold, they were so afraid there ? d be some 
trickery about it." 

This experiment was pronounced a technical success. " The 
suggestion was then made," says Colonel Shook, " that this 
plant be enlarged so as to give it capacity enough to make it 
commercially successful. The Tennessee Company willingly 
adopted this suggestion, and its board of directors passed a 
resolution subscribing one hundred thousand dollars to aid in 
this work. The Louisville and Nashville Railroad Company 
agreed to subscribe for a like amount. After waiting more than 
a year, nothing had been done, and the question of making steel 
became an absolute necessity." 

The subscription to the stock of the Birmingham rolling mills, 
payable in coal and iron, had been voted by the board of directors 
of the Tennessee Company on condition that the company itself 
stay out of the steel business. 

Says Mr. Bowron: "I now realized this was the turning 
point in the history of the Tennessee Company and of the 
Birmingham District. I had been very successful in the previous 
few months in handling financial matters relieving the company 
from menacing situations and had received kind words from 
the New York directors. I therefore staked my position upon 
the issue and wrote a sarcastic letter to the executive com- 
mittee pointing out that Tennessee Company would never 
amount to anything unless it went into the manufacture of 
steel ; that there would be neither credit belonging to it nor 
dividends on its stock unless a new departure was made, and I 
said that as they were such busy men in New York, if they 
would turn the officers loose we would get up a steel plant and 
find the money ourselves." The answer to this letter is copied 
in full in the minutes of the executive committee of the Ten- 
nessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company, as follows: 

Meeting of December 20, 1897, held at New York. 

I. A letter from President Baxter, dated December 17, rela- 
tive to the Birmingham Rolling Mill Company's steel plant en- 
largement was read, and, on motion of Mr. Gurnee, seconded by 
Mr. Swann, it was 

Resolved that if the Birmingham Rolling Mill will enlarge its 
present steel plant so as to make its daily capacity not less than 
five hundred tons, and will buy the basic iron it may require 
from the Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company at cur- 



464 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



rent market prices, the Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad Com- 
pany will agree to take not less than $100,000 of the proposed 
issue of bonds at the same price they are taken by the Louisville 
and Nashville Railroad Company, and other large subscribers, to 
be paid for at the rate of ten per cent per month in pig iron at 
current market prices; and the Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Rail- 
road Company will further agree not to build directly or indi- 
rectly a competitive steel plant in the Birmingham District for 

years provided the work is commenced promptly and 

pushed vigorously to completion. 

/q. ^ ( James T. Woodward, Chairman. 
IDigneaj j H R Slqa ^ Secretary. 



Meeting of January 3, 1898, held in New York. 

II. [Latter part of minute.] A letter from Vice-president 
Bowron dated December 24 was read. Mr. Bowron devotes the 
greater part of this letter in advocating the construction of a 
steel plant by the company, saying, among other things, " If the 
executive committee will simply give the officers of the company 
permission to go ahead and do it, they will not only put up a 
steel plant for the company within the next year, but will find 
the money themselves with which to accomplish it." 

III. On motion of Mr. Gurnee, duly seconded, it was re- 
solved that the following letter be sent in reply: 

January 3, 1898. 

James Bowron, Esq., 

Vice-president Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company, Birming- 
ham, Alabama. 

Dear Sir, — Your letter of the 24th ult. was submitted by 
me to the executive committee to-day. After discussing the 
matter, the members of the committee were unanimous in the 
opinion that the steel plant should be built if the matter can be 
financed. The committee is perfectly willing to " turn the offi- 
cers loose/' and will treat very hospitably any plan which may 
hereafter be submitted which will bring about the desired result 
without drawing upon funds which do not exist. 

You must not, however, forget the resolution passed with 
reference to the Birmingham Rolling Mill, which must be re- 
scinded if you are to build a steel plant in the Birmingham] 
District. 

Yours truly, 

James T. Woodward, Chairman. 

On motion the meeting adjourned. 

/q- a\ (James T. Woodward, Chairman. 
(bignea; | H R gL0 ^ Secretar ^ 



\ 



AFFAIRS OF BIRMINGHAM DISTRICT 465 

Upon receipt of this last letter the officers proceeded to gather 
subscriptions. President Baxter wrote to M. H. Smith, president 
of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad, and to Samuel Spencer, 
president of the Southern, proposing that they assist in raising 
the capital to construct the steel plant. Both replied in person 
and discussed the matter in detail. After a conference with O. 
H. P. Belmont and with John Pierpont Morgan, each railroad 
company agreed to take $250,000 worth of Tennessee Coal Com- 
pany bonds; $11,000 worth was the amount Messrs. Baxter, 
Shook, and Bowron required. W. S. Gurnee, J. T. Woodward, 
John J. McComb, A. B. Boardman, and Cord Meyer were among 
the New York capitalists who subscribed. The citizens of Bir- 
mingham raised $150,000. 

The Alabama Steel and Shipbuilding Company was organized 
in 1898 for the purpose of erecting the steel plant. It was 
operated under a special charter granted by the General Assembly 
of Alabama to James Bowron and George B. McCormack. Its 
capital stock was $490,000 and it had authority to issue 
$1,100,000 of bonds given by the stockholders. Its bonds were 
guaranteed by the Tennessee Company of which it was, as may 
be seen, a subsidiary company. Its board of directors comprised 
General Rufus N. Rhodes, George B. McCormack, Walker Percy, 
J. H. Barr, K". E. Barker, J. K. McDonald, and P. H. Earle, 
while its officers were N". E. Barker, president; J. K. McDonald, 
vice-president; and Paschal G. Shook, secretary and treasurer. 
General Rhodes was elected on the board in recognition of his 
important services in helping to bring about the achievement of 
the long-desired project. As editor of the Birmingham News he 
brought every influence in his power to bear upon the con- 
struction of the steel plant, and, furthermore, he contributed, 
personally, several thousand dollars to the enterprise. In the 
decade preceding, General Rhodes had proved himself a strong 
advocate for the coal and iron business of Alabama, when, at 
the inauguration by T. H. Aldrich of the export trade of coal 
to points in the West Indies and in South America, the general 
took up actively in his paper the interest of this movement. 

Rufus N". Rhodes was born June 5, 1856, on the Mississippi 
coast near Pascagoula. "My father was a Mississippian," the 
general once observed, " I am an American. The war settled 
that." His father, Rufus Randolph Rhodes, son of Andrew 
Jackson's captain of engineers, was a lawyer and acted as com- 

30 



466 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 

• 

missioner of patents in the Confederate Government. t After 
graduating from the South Western University at Clarksville, 
Tennessee, young Rhodes took up the study of law, becoming 
eventually city attorney of Clarksville and member of the 
General Assembly of the State of Tennessee. After a brief 
venture in Chicago he removed to Birmingham, Alabama, in 
1887 and founded the Birmingham News, of which he is still 
editor-in-chief and proprietor. 

Great public interest and enthusiasm for the steel plant was 
aroused by the press and by the leaders of the enterprise. Presi- 
dent Baxter, Colonel Shook, and Mr. Bowron worked indefati- 
gably to raise the funds, day in and day out for three months. 

At length, July 11, 1898, when Colonel Shook succeeded in 
getting several of the largest stockholders in the Tennessee 
Company to also subscribe, the subscription work was finished. 
" The board of directors then authorized the officials of the com- 
pany to proceed at once with the erection of the steel mill," 
says Colonel Shook, " stipulating that we should build ten open- 
hearth furnaces with a capacity of one hundred (100) tons each 
per day, and also put in a blooming mill." 

On July 14 a site for the mills was selected at Ensley by 
President Baxter, Colonel Shook, T. T. Hillman, Mr. Mc- 
Cormack, manager ; Erskine Ramsay, chief engineer and 
assistant general manager, and C. H. Wellman, a steel works 
engineer from Cleveland, Ohio. The first stake was driven 
that day and construction work was pushed along. Colo- 
nel Shook camped on the ground and superintended the 
construction of the plant. On Thanksgiving Day, November 
30, 1899, the first cast of steel was made and the Birmingham 
District entered upon a new era. In regard to the new venture 
Colonel Shook says: 

" The Tennessee Company now demonstrated that basic open- 
hearth steel could be successfully and commercially manufac- 
tured in the Birmingham District, and that basic open-hearth 
rails could be successfully and commercially manufactured and 
sold in competition with Bessemer rails. This had never before 
been done successfully in the United States. If Sir Henry Besse- 
mer had never invented the Bessemer process for making steel, 
the Birmingham District would have been the leading iron center 
in the world for the last quarter of the century. Unfortunately 
for the district it had no ores from which Bessemer iron could 
be made, and when the Bessemer process had been perfected the 



AFFAIRS OF BIRMINGHAM DISTRICT 467 



Birmingham District realized that all of its ores carried too 
much phosphorus to make Bessemer iron. The result was that 
the attention of the iron-making world was directed to the great 
deposits known as lake ores, including the Vermillion, Gogebic, 
and Mesaba ranges. These ores were sufficiently low in phos- 
phorus to make Bessemer steel, and as we were just crossing the 
threshold of the steel age, all other districts that could not fur- 
nish Bessemer ores were neglected and discarded. 

" A quarter of the century of the reign of Bessemer steel 
developed the fact that the country required and demanded a 
better quality of steel than could be made by the Bessemer pro- 
cess. The iron and steel makers of this country were slowly 
and reluctantly forced to admit this fact. Then, and not until 
then, did the Birmingham District enter the field as a real com- 
petitor. To-day the handicap has been removed and the Bir- 
mingham District is not only on a parity with the other iron dis- 
tricts of this country, but possesses an advantage that cannot 
be overcome, — that is, the close proximity of its coal, iron ore, 
and limestone. All the materials to make a ton of iron can be 
assembled at any given point in this district at a less cost than 
it takes to transport one ton of ore from the lakes to the Pitts- 
burg District. Its transportation facilities for the distribution 
of its products are as good as that of any other district; its 
proximity to tide-water gives it advantages for export that no 
other district has; its geographical location gives it a climate 
that no other district can have, and the next quarter of a cen- 
tury will give it the development that it is entitled to, and that 
has been retarded and held back for the last quarter of a century 
by Bessemer steel." 

The following two years were spent not only in producing basic 
iron and in steel making but in the endeavor to consolidate the 
various different properties on a basis of uniformity of practice. 
Very little capital was available for improvements and the 
bulls and bears were again growling over the Tennessee Com- 
pany stock. The directors of the company became more than 
ever concerned in the manipulation of their company's stock on 
Wall Street, and less interested than ever in the legitimate 
development of its properties. At a meeting of the executive 
committee held in New York, November 25, 1901, Mr. Baxter 
turned in his resignation as president of the Tennessee Com- 
pany. The following resolutions were unanimously adopted: 

"Resolved that the resignation of Nathaniel Baxter, Jr., as 
president and director of this company be accepted ; and further 
" Resolved that the directors of this company desire to express 



468 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



their appreciation of the long, intelligent, and faithful services 
rendered by him to the company; and further 

" Resolved that the secretary be directed to send a copy of these 
resolutions to Mr. Baxter. 

" L. T. Beecher, Secretary/ 9 

Don H. Bacon, who had been acting as chairman of the ex- 
ecutive board since early in 1901, was elected to the presidency 
and a new regime of officers was appointed eventually to the 
control of the Tennessee Company. Charles McCrery became 
vice-president and L. T. Beecher secretary and treasurer. The 
new directors were James T. Woodward, Frank S. Witherbee, J. 
Henry Smith, S. L. Schoenmaker, Joseph B. Dickson, Elverton 
R. Chapman, Cord Meyer, Charles McCrery, Benjamin F. Tracy, 
Albert B. Boardman, Walker Percy, William Barbour, Don H. 
Bacon, Henry R. Sloat, and Hugh Dewart. 

Don H. Bacon is one of the big mining men of the northwest. 
When he came down into the Birmingham District in 1901, he 
carried, all told, a thirty-two years' record of service in the iron 
business of Michigan and Minnesota. The history of the vast 
ore ranges, Marquette, Menominee, Gogebic, Vermillion, and 
Mesabi, are but chapters in the life-work of Don H. Bacon. 
Mr. Bacon was not by birth a Westerner, but a Pennsylvanian. 
His folk were farmers and of English stock. They moved out 
to northern Michigan during the Civil War and settled in old 
Peter White's little shipping port, Marquette Town, from which, 
in 1854, the first iron ore of the Lake Superior region was 
shipped to Pennsylvania from the Jackson mines in Marquette 
County. 

When Don Bacon was sixteen years old he began to earn his 
living as a messenger boy there in Marquette and picked up 
telegraphy in between times. In 1869 he entered the service of 
the Cleveland Iron Mining Company at Ishpeming, Michigan. 
He remained with this one company eighteen years, occupying suc- 
cessively the positions of operator, clerk, assistant superintendent, 
and at length agent or general manager. The office of general 
manager of the Minnesota Iron Company, with direction over 
four thousand men, was offered him in 1887. His first handi- 
work was the Soudan Mine of the Vermillion Range, and there 
is no man of the upper country to-day who has forgotten, or 
ever will forget, how Don Bacon made Soudan. That Vermillion 
iron vein, slim as a steer girder and almost as impenetrable, hard 



AFFAIRS OF BIRMINGHAM DISTRICT 469 



riveted to earth, took sharp figuring to get results. Don Bacon 
got them where no one had before him. He banished the sledge- 
hammer system, introduced ore crushers, the filling system, mod- 
ern machinery, and all sorts of original methods and devices to 
economize cost of production and increase the output. He made 
Soudan a model mine. He opened dozens of new mines and 
operated them on a modern scale, securing an immense tonnage 
for future developments. He enlarged and modernized every 
operation of the Minnesota Iron Company and increased the 
yearly output from four hundred thousand tons up into several 
millions. Under his hand every operation got to be so fair- 
looking, clean, trim, and efficient that travelers through that 
North country would sometimes say, " That must be a Minnesota 
Iron Company mine." 

In 1895 the Minnesota Iron Company took on new Mesabi 
properties, and the first shipment of ore from this range was 
sent out from a mine under Don Bacon's hand. Men in Duluth 
and in and around the upper country were almost as crazy about 
it all as folk were in the boom days of Birmingham. 

But all this belongs in the Book of Minnesota, and merely 
enough may be mentioned to show that Don Bacon had won his 
spurs before he entered the Alabama field; that he had execu- 
tive ability out of common and expert knowledge of the mining 
end of the business. The Minnesota Iron Company, consolidat- 
ing with the Illinois Steel Company in 1898, made up the huge 
Federal Steel Company that in 1901 was brought, with the Car- 
negie Steel Company and the Oliver Mining Company, into con- 
solidation with the United States Steel Corporation. Early in 
1901 Mr. Bacon resigned the position of president of the Minne- 
sota Iron Company to become chairman of the board of directors 
of the Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company. 

Full and direct charge of all the property of the Tennessee 
Company was then placed in his hands. He came South. "I 
found an empty treasury/' he stated, " and a property that 
needed millions for upbuilding. I also found that the operations 
were greatly hampered, almost directed, in fact^ by labor organi- 
zations, and the cost of production largely increased as a result. 
With only the profit from pig iron and coal it was possible to 
do but a few of the things that the property required." 

Mr. Bacon gave a careful and minute survey of the Tennessee 
Company properties and the conditions under which the com- 



470 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



pany was struggling, and being furnished with several mil- 
lion dollars for reconstruction, he at once made efforts to improve 
the mines, the furnaces, the steel plant, and the rolling mills. 
He ordered the construction of Furnace No. 6 at Ensley. This 
was built under the general direction of Charles McCrery and 
effectually demonstrated the low cost at which pig iron could be 
made in the Birmingham District at that time. The first lot 
of open-hearth steel rails ever made in quantity were now turned 
out, and the demand was found to exceed the supply. Mr. Bacon 
also equipped some of the company's coal mines with modern hoists, 
electric haulage, coal-cutting machinery, pumps, and fans. The 
ends toward which his efforts were directed, as he has himself 
said very simply and briefly, were, " to increase the loyalty and 
efficiency of the employees ; to add to their comfort and decrease 
the dangers to which they were subject ; and to adopt the methods 
that had stood the test at those mills, furnaces, and mines that 
were recognized as being the best." To place the red ore mines 
both on surface and below on a level with the best mines of the 
Lake Superior country was Mr. Bacon's idea. 

He therefore employed as manager of these mines a man of 
many years' mining experience in the upper country and one 
with whom he himself had had long association, — Edwin Ball. 
Mr. Ball was at that time (1901) general manager of all the 
Minnesota Iron Company mines on both the Vermillion and 
Mesabi ranges. In addition to the fact that he had so far proved 
expert as an underground as well as a surface man, Mr. Ball had 
shown that he could handle men and affairs with a vigorous and 
progressive hand, that he knew both the practical and technical 
ends of the business, and had considerable knowledge of survey- 
ing and mechanical engineering. He could take the initiative, 
design, and execute. 

In fact, he has spent practically his lifetime in the mining 
business. Of English birth, his early home was in Devonshire, 
but his parents brought him to America as a child. His father, 
Thomas Ball, was a mining man, superintendent of the Mount 
Hope Mining Company of New Jersey, which is now the Empire 
Iron Mining Company. Thomas Ball first came to the United 
States during the Civil War, and after a prospecting tour through 
the copper country of Michigan, settled with his family at Dover, 
New Jersey. It was here that his boys started in under his 
direction. 



AFFAIRS OF BIRMINGHAM DISTRICT 471 



Edwin Ball's first job, when he was no more than eleven years 
old, was carrying tools at the old Mount Hope mines in between 
school terms. He went to work in the mines in his sixteenth 
year, and two years later struck out for the Lake Superior coun- 
try. He began working underground at the Republic mine in 
Michigan, which was considered at that period (1878) one of 
the best ore mines of the Lake region. During the summer of 
1879 he went to Silver Islet, Canada, a mine which was then 
turning out such an immense amount of pure grade metal that 
stories of it sounded like a fable. It was a bleak, solitary rock 
standing out in the great lake about a mile from the Canadian 
shore, drenched in spray from the waves, and icebound half the 
year. Not a blade of grass grew there, and the rock was bound 
in by huge cribs on which the camp was built. The shaft dropped 
down some nine hundred feet under the lake. After one year's 
labor at this forlorn and lonely rock Edwin Ball returned to 
Michigan, " done with silver mining," as he said. After working 
in the different mines on the Marquette Range several years, he 
was appointed head mining captain at the Florence mine, Flor- 
ence, Wisconsin, on the Menominee Range. In 1886 he became 
superintendent of the Youngstown mine, Crystal Falls, Michi- 
gan. He went to Colorado for a short space and made an in- 
spection of the mines of that region. He was always on the 
lookout for new methods and devices in practical mining every- 
where. Upon his return to Michigan he was appointed, in the 
spring of 1893, superintendent of Piatt mine on the Marquette 
Range. In 1894 he accepted a position with the Minnesota Iron 
Company as assistant manager of the Minnesota mine on the 
Vermillion Range at Soudan under Don H. Bacon. In 1895 he 
became manager, and was later promoted to general manager of 
all the Minnesota Iron Company mines on both Vermillion and 
Mesabi ranges. This position he resigned late in 1901, as has 
been stated, to take charge of the Tennessee Company ore mines. 
When he came South he brought with him a number of his 
best men, who were familiar with Minnesota mining methods. 

The red ore mines of the Tennessee Company run a good fif- 
teen miles on Red Mountain, counting from Potter to the drifts 
at Green Springs. The Muscoda group, just beyond Bessemer, 
is within gunshot of the site of old Fort Jonesboro, the original 
settlement of Jefferson County. The Ishcooda group has figured 
in these chronicles before, for here the first mine was worked on 



472 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



the mountain. During the Civil War, when the mountain there- 
abouts belonged to Baylis E. Grace, ore from Ishcooda fed the 
Oxmoor furnaces and was turned into iron for the making of 
shot and shell and cannon for the Confederacy. The outcrop 
was again worked in the early eighteen-seventies, when the Ox- 
moor furnaces were rebuilt by Pratt and DeBardeleben, and a 
tramway was constructed by Joseph Squire across Shades Val- 
ley to the plant. One of the slopes begun at this time was called 
McElwain slope, after the builder of the old Irondale furnace. 
In the third group, " Fossil," two slopes, " Ware " and " Alice," 
were called for Horace Ware, founder of Shelby Iron Company, 
and for Alice DeBardeleben, daughter of Henry DeBardeleben, 
for whom the Tennessee Company's Alice furnaces were also 
named. These various names, like all the old landmarks, are 
gradually passing into oblivion. With the exception of the 
names which designate the three separate groups, Muscoda, Fos- 
sil, and Ishcooda, the mines are now referred to solely by 
numbers. 

Up to the management of Edwin Ball in the Bacon adminis- 
tration all these ore mines, as has been previously stated, had 
been worked by contract. Fossil and Spring Gap, driven down 
over fifteen hundred feet, were the best equipped of any. Upon 
assuming charge, Mr. Ball changed the entire system and planned 
out reconstruction work on a large scale below and above ground. 
The main slopes were leveled; new tipples, new power-houses 
and boiler plants were constructed, and Nordberg and Allis com- 
pressors, Nordberg and Webster-Camp and Lane hoists, auto- 
matic stokers and new pumps, twelve-ton skips and crushers were 
installed. Some additional railroad track to connect with the 
Birmingham Mineral Division of the Louisville and Nashville 
Railroad, which serves all the Red Mountain properties, was also 

The Tennessee mines are about eight miles, as the crow flies, 
from the Ensley Steel Mills and six miles southwest of Bir- 
mingham. The average thickness of the ore seam is from ten 
to eighteen feet. The dip of the beds is from twenty to thirty 
degrees, and the slopes vary from fourteen hundred to twenty- 
five hundred feet. 

All of the improvements introduced by Edwin Ball were de- 
signed on solid and enduring lines. The equipment and arrange- 
ment of power-houses, engine plants, shops, tipples, etc., at all 




1. Main Entrance to Slope, Fossil Mixes, T. C. I. 

2 Old Entry in Valley View Mine, Red Mountain 

a. Looking down Main Slope. Muscoda Mines (Red Ore), T. C. I. 



AFFAIRS OF BIRMINGHAM DISTRICT, 473 

of the mines in the three great groups are practically the same. 
Built of brick and reinforced concrete, they stand trim and sub- 
stantial on the face of the hill overlooking the neatly laid out 
mining camps at the mountain's base. A " dry/' model hospital 
and every kind of up-to-date auxiliary known to the modern min- 
ing world have been gradually introduced at these mines. Mr. 
Ball has remained as manager throughout the successive changes 
of administration. 

The mines at Ishcooda hold a commanding site. Red Moun- 
tain, shorn of timber, stands in long, clear-cut, deep red lines, 
sharp against the sky, and one looks out towards Birmingham. 
The railroad track, ascending by a series of switch backs, runs 
along the slope near to the summit, then curves down in and out 
of the gaps. It is an interesting sight to watch an ore train 
heavily laden with its rich cargo wind its way slowly down the 
hillside and go on its journey to the huge furnaces. 

The year following the Spanish War an interesting event in 
the Alabama coal and iron world occurred in New York City. 
It was the organization of a new company destined to rise to 
high rank in the Birmingham District, and, indeed, to line up 
close alongside the giant group composed of the Tennessee Coal, 
Iron, and Railroad Company, the Pratt Consolidated Coal Com- 
pany, the Sloss-Sheffield Steel and Iron Company, the Woodward 
Iron Company, and the Republic Iron and Steel Company. 

Thomas Greene Bush and Fred M. Jackson were the two Ala- 
bama men instrumental in bringing about the formation of this 
concern. Abram S. Hewitt of New York, General Samuel 
Thomas of New York, and Richard H. Edmonds of Maryland, 
three men intimately acquainted with the mineral resources of 
Alabama, were among those backing up the scheme. Capital 
of the International Trust Company of Baltimore, of which they 
were members, was enlisted. A conference was called in New 
York, at which Colonel Bush, then president of the Clifton Iron 
Company and of the historic Shelby Iron Company, and Mr. 
Jackson, then general manager of the Standard Coal Company, 
were both present. The Standard, Clifton, Gadsden, and Gate 
City properties, together with the Mary Pratt Furnace Company, 
were merged into one new organization and named the Alabama 
Consolidated Coal and Iron Company. 

This giant concern was thus builded on foundations originally 



474 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



laid by Horace Ware, Stephen S. Glidden, Samuel Noble, Stephen 
Noble, T. H. Aldrich, A. C. Danner, Joseph Squire, William T. 
Underwood, John E. Ware, T. T. Hillman, F. M. Jackson, and 
T. G. Bush. 

The big company was organized on July 19, 1899, under the laws 
of the State of New Jersey, with a capitalization of $5,000,000, 
of which $2,500,000 were seven per cent cumulative preferred 
stock and $2,500,000 common stock. Thomas G. Bush was 
elected president, Fred M. Jackson general manager, and John 
E. Searles vice-president and treasurer. The original board of 
directors comprised Abram S. Hewitt, Samuel Thomas, and John 
E. Searles of New York; J. William Middendorf, Summerfield 
Baldwin, Douglass H. Gordon, and Richard H. Edmonds of Bal- 
timore ; T. G. Bush and F. M. Jackson of Birmingham. Head- 
quarters were established in Birmingham and the operation of the 
various mines and plants of the company at once began under 
the new administration. 

Although Thomas Greene Bush had not up to this time come 
into the affairs of the Birmingham District proper, he had been 
for several years identified with iron interests in other quarters 
of the State. Since 1890 he had been president of the celebrated 
old Shelby Iron "Company, whose records have been traced from 
early days in these pages. He was an Alabamian, the son of one 
of the early settlers from Georgia, and was born at Pickensville, 
Pickens County, in the year of 1847. His first schooling was in 
Pickensville and Mobile. He was fourteen years old when the 
war broke out, but alert, precocious, and " so desirous of being a 
major-general 99 that he set about forming two boy companies, 
and drilled them himself by " Hardee's Tactics," for that was to 
him then the book of books. He captained both the little com- 
panies designated the Lee Cadets and the Butler Guards, and he 
volunteered the services of the latter to the governor. They were 
accepted. The Butler Guards even performed some slight as- 
signment on guard duty until 1862, when several of the older 
members entered the Confederate ranks proper. Being denied 
the front and the firing-line, their young captain entered the 
University of Alabama, keeping up his study of tactics the 
while. Here, though but sixteen years old, he acted as adjutant of 
the corps of cadets which in 1864 was ordered into service, form- 
ing part of the Sixty-second Alabama, of which regiment young 
Bush subsequently was appointed adjutant. Bush was captured 



AFFAIRS OF BIRMINGHAM DISTRICT 475 



at Blakely and held a prisoner-of-war at Ship Island and in New 
Orleans. Here he remained until the surrender of General Tay- 
lor, when he was exchanged at Vicksburg, and later paroled at 
Meridian, Mississippi. His father, who had been engaged in the 
cotton commission business since 1852 in Mobile, had a large cot- 
ton plantation in Mississippi, but, like all the other Southern 
planters, his affairs were now (in 1865) out of joint. 

" Well," he said to both his sons, safe back from the wars, 
" I have got just enough capital left to set you two boys up in 
business and let you get a start." 

They did not want to go into business, however, and asked for 
the cash outright so that they could first finish the university 
course. Their father turned over the funds to them and they 
entered the University of Mississippi, and were graduated in 
1867 with the highest honors of the class. 

Then they took up work in Mobile in the mercantile and cot- 
ton commission business. In 1871 Thomas G. Bush entered in- 
dependently into the wholesale grocery business, and began to 
take part in municipal affairs. His marriage to Miss Alberta 
Williams took place in 1871. Miss Williams was a descendant 
of the Hollises of Massachusetts and of Roger Williams. Young 
Bush had a leading part in the Mobile " revolution " of 1886 ; 
he took up the fight to regulate the whiskey license, oust the 
grafters, and do away with the fee system for county solicitors 
and probate judges. He was elected to the State Legislature and 
served as chairman of the ways and means committee on fees and 
salaries. At this period Captain Bush also engaged in a few 
railroad enterprises, and became president of the Mobile and 
Birmingham Railroad Company, which was later merged into the 
Southern Railroad. 

His connection with the 'mineral section of the State came 
about in a purely accidental way. He owned a stock farm near 
Oxford, in the Anniston District. His occasional trips up there 
from Mobile brought him in contact with that family of iron- 
masters, the Nobles, so distinguished in these records, and he be- 
came a stockholder in the Woodstock Iron Company. In 1890 he 
joined with other parties in New York in the purchase of the Shelby 
Iron Company 1 which was then organized with a capital stock of 

1 This historic company, after its destruction by Wilson's raiders, had 
remained idle for two years. Then, under contract, a controlling interest 
was transferred to the following New England capitalists: O. D. Case, 



476 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



$1,000,000. This stock was subscribed for and paid in chiefly by- 
parties in New York and Hartford, among them being W. W. 
Jacobs of Hartford, Connecticut; Abram S. Hewitt, W. S. Gurnee, 
Ex Norton, H. E. Garth, General Samuel Thomas, and the 
Lehman brothers of New York. In Alabama the principal stock- 
holders were A. L. Tyler, Judge James W. Lapsley, Duncan T. 
Parker and T. G. Bush. They elected Captain Bush president, 
"And I had no more idea of going into the iron business at 
that time," said the captain, " than I had of going to heaven." 
Captain Bush applied to the management of his iron company 
the same general business principles he had used in his former 
mercantile and railroad experience. Later he was elected presi- 
dent of the Clifton Iron Company, 1 and for a time he served as 

David W. Wetmore, John H. Browning, Newton Case, R. H. Burnham, 
Caleb Clapp, Samuel Coit, Henry Stanley, Norman Boardman, Daniel 
Phillips, Edward Livingston, Nathan Benham, A. W. North, and A. G. 
West. This new company had erected two large and well-equipped char- 
coal blast furnaces and were producing a car wheel iron that ranked high 
in quality among the grades of pig metal produced in the South. It had 
been turning out, in fact, upwards of one hundred tons of metal, or twelve 
carloads, per day, since 1869. All of this shipped via the Savannah and 
Memphis commanded market in Philadelphia and New York. The fur- 
naces were each of thirty tons capacity and were the first modern stacks 
erected after the war, as they were also the first to have connected with 
them hot blast stoves. They were constructed by Walter Crafts, "then 
a young man but recently graduated from the School of Science and Man- 
ufacture in Germany," said John E. Ware, "and it was he who first applied 
European principles to furnace construction in Alabama." The atten- 
tion of Abram S. Hewitt had been called repeatedly to the Shelby grade 
of iron. The reputation it achieved during the war stood it in good stead, 
and by the year 1876 the Shelby Iron Company carried on the largest 
business, without exception, of any iron company in Alabama. Negotia- 
tions were entered upon in 1890, looking to its purchase by new parties. 

1 As to the Clifton Iron Company and its properties which were for- 
merly officered by Captain Bush there are notes of interest. John E. Ware 
states: "In 1862 Samuel Clabaugh and James A. Curry bought timber 
and ore lands on and near Salt Creek, two miles east of Mumford, in Tal- 
ladega County, and on the fifteenth of September, 1862, they entered 
into partnership for the manufacture of charcoal pig iron. They erected 
a small blast furnace, and operated it under the firm name of Clabaugh 
and Curry until November 11, 1863, when Clabaugh bought Curry's half 
interest for one hundred thousand dollars, and ran the furnace on his own 
account until the plant was destroyed by Federal soldiers in 1864." 

In 1868 Horace Ware bought this Salt Creek Iron property in the 
wrecked condition as left by the Federal troops, and at once set about 
organizing a company to rebuild it. He got in communication with 
Stephen S. Glidden of Ohio, and on November 2, 1872, Ware and Glidden 
filed articles of incorporation with the probate judge of Talladega County 
! organizing the Alabama Iron Company, with themselves as incorporators, 
and Baird and Orr of Evansville, Indiana, as additional stockholders. 
They capitalized the company at $100,000 and in 1873 put in blast a thirty- 
ton charcoal blast furnace. S. S. Glidden was president and James L. Orr 
secretary and treasurer. 

John T. Milner has preserved a detailed statement from Mr. Glidden 



AFFAIRS OF BIRMINGHAM DISTRICT 477 

president of the Woodstock Iron Company. He took up his 
residence in Anniston with his family from this time until the 
formation of the Alabama Consolidated. 

Fred M. Jackson, the general manager of the new company, 
was one of the old guard of the Birmingham District. He 
worked first at Pratt mines back in 1881, when he had a minor 

concerning the workings of this furnace for the years 1873 to 1876. Mr. 
Glidden states that his labor cost $1.50 per ton; and then he could con- 
tract for charcoal at six cents per bushel. Says Milner: "Charcoal iron 
is made all over the United States where ore timber and limestone can be 
found; but I doubt whether any furnace outside of Alabama can show 
such a record as this." This furnace was then the sole one in operation 
in Talladega County. 

Concerning it Dr. Eugene A. Smith says in his report of 1873: 

"This furnace, though a small one, yields as well as any in the State. 
The charcoal is burned in ordinary dust pits upon the grounds, and the 
ore is roasted at the furnace, so that all the operations, except the raising 
of the ore and the quarrying of the limestone and cutting of the wood, 
go on under the eye of the superintendent. 

"Of the future of Talladega County in the production of iron there 
can scarcely be two opinions. The belt of dolomite next to the semi- 
metamorphic hills holds ore enough for an immense industry and whilst 
other regions of the county are not so much favored in this respect, yet 
there are furnaces running in other counties upon ore banks not more 
extensive than some of those enumerated above. 

" Want of transportation stands in the way of the improvement of many 
of these localities, and the present low prices of iron and bad market are 
already seriously felt at several of the furnaces already erected in the 
State." 

Under Glidden's management the Alabama Iron Company manu- 
factured or produced pig iron for foundry and car-wheel purposes suc- 
cessfully to December 1, 1881, when Samuel Noble, Alfred L. Tyler, and 
Horace Ware purchased the property at $150,000. In August 25, 1880, 
Horace Ware and Samuel Noble organized and incorporated the Clifton 
Iron Company, with capital stock of $300,000 based on timber and brown 
ore lands at and near what is known as Ironaton in Talladega County. 

Samuel Noble was elected president, S. N. Noble superintendent, and 
John E. Ware secretary and treasurer. This Clifton property remained 
unimproved and inactive until December 1, 1881, when it took over by 
purchase the Alabama Iron Company's property. To this Mr. Noble gave 
the name Jenifer, in honor of his mother Jenifer Ward Noble. The two 
properties were then operated under the name of the Clifton Iron Company. 
In 1884 this company, with Stephen N. Noble as superintendent, erected 
two fifty-ton charcoal furnaces near the Ironaton ore lands. In 1889 the 
Clifton Iron Company sold the old Alabama Iron Company property 
Jenifer, with ten thousand acres of ore and timber lands to John W. 
Noble, who formed the Jenifer Iron Company. In November 15, 1894, 
John H. Noble bought this property and organized the Jenifer Furnace 
Company with himself as president and John E. Ware as secretary and 
treasurer and general manager. 

Although Horace Ware was one of the organizers and a large stock- 
holder in the Clifton Iron Company, he took no active part in its operation, 
and sold out his interest in 1888. In this year Sam Noble died and 
John E. Ware sold his stock in Clifton and resigned as secretary and 
treasurer. A Mr. Prime, of Philadelphia, became president, and John S. 
Mooring treasurer and secretary, while Stephen N. Noble remained gen- 
eral manager. In 1892 a change of management occurred, when Captain 
Bush was elected president. 



478 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



office under Enoch Ensley. After eight years with the Pratt 
Coal and Iron Company and the Tennessee Company, he quit 
the coal field for a space and engaged in business in Birmingham. 
One day early in 1890 T. T. Hillman stopped him on the street. 
" Fred J ackson," he said, " what right have you got to be in the 
grocery business when you 're a coal man ? Come up to my office 
right now and arrange to go back into the coal mining business." 
Mr. Hillman had just acquired an interest in thirty-three thou- 
sand acres of Tuskaloosa County coal land, near the Alabama 
Great Southern Railroad, from T. H. Aldrich and A. C. Danner, 
original organizers of the Standard Coal Company and owners 
of all that coal region. One mine had been opened at Brookwood, 
a few miles of railroad constructed, and Dudley Station started. 
Says Captain Danner in this connection : " It was our intention 
to go right across the railroad and build down to the Warrior 
River, put on barges, and bring such coal as we could sell to 
Mobile by water; but we were ahead of our time in our desire 
to develop the coal resources of Alabama, and undertook too much 
for our capital and for our credit. The banks in this section 
then had but little money, and individuals had less, and very few 
appreciated the great future that was ahead of us in the coal- 
mining business. We got into financial troubles and had to 
abandon this enterprise." 

Mr. Hillman and other local capitalists with Henry L. Ein- 
stein, owner of the New York Press, and his brother, William 
Einstein, who furnished the bulk of the purchasing money, now 
bought the properties and reorganized the Standard Coal Com- 
pany. The Einstein brothers became president and vice-president. 
The office of secretary and treasurer and mine manager was 
offered Mr. Jackson. He accepted the position and moved out 
to the mining camp at Brookwood. During the nine years he was 
with the company he developed the properties at Milldale and 
Brookwood into one of the largest and best equipped in the Bir- 
mingham District. The Standard Company erected the first coal 
washer ever operated in Alabama. This washer was of the jig- 
type, built by Walter Stein, after a design of Schustamer and 
Cramer, German engineers. The mines were developed to an 
output of some eight hundred tons of coal per day. The quality 
of the coke produced grew famous in Alabama and secured an 
extensive trade, reaching as far as Mexico. 

In 1898 W. P. Pinckard secured an option of the Standard 



AFFAIRS OF BIRMINGHAM DISTRICT 479 



properties which was allowed to expire. Another option was 
secured by Mr. Jackson, who immediately engaged with Captain 
Bush in the organization of a company that would combine the 
Standard with other valuable properties. The result of their 
efforts was the organization of the Alabama Consolidated Coal 
and Iron Company. 

Mr. Jackson retired in 1901 to take the presidency of the 
Blocton-Cahaba Company, in which, together with J. B. Wads- 
worth, he was owner, and to push the work of opening mines in 
Bibb County. " Mr. Jackson always seemed to have the faculty 
of handling men successfully," George B. McCormack said, 
"and he was noted for his ability to dispose of his output of 
coal at good prices." 

He served as president of the Industrial and Scientific Society 
at one time, and in 1902 he was elected president of the Bir- 
mingham District Coal Operators' Association. He retired from 
the mining business in 1905 after having served in the field for 
twenty-four years. An active leader in the cause of prohibition 
and in all lines looking towards civic improvement, Mr. Jack- 
son is, in 1909, one of the able and public-spirited citizens 
of Birmingham. He is a stockholder and director in a variety 
of companies, and is president of the Jefferson County Building 
and Loan Association. He has served twice as president of the 
Birmingham Chamber of Commerce. 

In 1899 the Alabama Consolidated Company had at its or- 
ganization the Standard Coal Company, embracing thirty-three 
thousand acres of coal land ; the Clifton Iron Company, with two 
furnaces with a capacity of two hundred and fifty tons 
of iron per day, and large brown ore acreage; the Gads- 
den furnace, ore property, and lime rock quarry; and the 
Mary Pratt furnace in Birmingham, comprising eighteen 
hundred acres of red ore, and large tonnage of limestone, dolo- 
mite, brownstone, chert, and sandstone. Almost directly after 
organization, the coal property known as Mary Lee, or Lewis- 
burg mines, containing about two thousand two hundred acres 
of coal land, and equipped fairly well with machinery, together 
with about one hundred and thirty coke ovens, was acquired at 
Captain Bush's instance. Additional coal lands near this prop- 
erty were subsequently bought, making the total acreage about 
three thousand acres. There was also subsequently purchased 



480 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



brown ore property at Pryors, Georgia, on the Southern Rail- 
way; and what is known as the Attalla ore mines, at Attalla, 
Alabama. The purchase of these additional properties rounded 
out the holdings so as to provide the company liberally with 
raw material from its own mines. Thus, all told, the properties 
of the Alabama Consolidated gathered together at its start 
made a fair showing. Just subsequent to its organization 
the company had issued $500,000 in first mortgage bonds, 
and $2,500,000 in second mortgage bonds. The proceeds 
of these bonds were applied to the purchase of property 
and improvements, except $1,250,000, which was exchanged 
for a similar amount of preferred stock, thus leaving the 
outstanding preferred stock of the company, $1,250,000. 

Captain Bush resigned from the presidency of the company 
on January 1, 1907, in order to devote himself more exclusively 
to his other interests. In addition to serving as president of 
the Shelby Iron Company, he was a director of the Rivers and 
Harbors Congress, a member of the Monetary Commission, 
created by the Indianapolis Monetary Conference in 1897, and 
was one of the trustees appointed by Theodore Roosevelt of 
the Foundation for the Promotion of Industrial Peace. 

The work of perhaps most signal importance accomplished 
by Captain Bush in the mineral region of Alabama was the 
investigation of the gray ore fields of the State. This is a 
distinctly modern enterprise and one in which he has been one 
of the most active pioneers. After considerable prospecting 
and experimenting Captain Bush and his associates purchased 
a large body of gray ore lands in Talladega County, and in 
1905 they organized the Gray Ore Iron Company. Douglass 
H. Gordon, president of the International Trust Company, 
and associates, of Baltimore, Maryland, also became interested 
in this field and organized the Alabama Ore and Iron Company. 

In the operation of the plant of the historic Shelby Iron Com- 
pany Captain Bush made no material changes. The company 
has been engaged continuously in the manufacture of high- 
grade charcoal iron, used largely in the manufacture of car 
wheels. It has two furnaces at its plant at Shelby, Alabama, 
which are large ones for charcoal furnaces. Only now and 
then have conditions permitted the operation of both furnaces 
at one time. Its supply of high-grade ore is still received from 
the same ore bank from which mining operations began under 



AFFAIRS OF BIRMINGHAM DISTRICT 481 

Horace Ware in 1848. This supply has, of course, been ma- 
terially depleted, but the company is continuing its operations 
as heretofore, when market conditions will admit. It owns a 
large acreage of land, something over forty-five thousand acres. 
As has been recorded, this company is one of the most noted in 
the history of the iron business in Alabama. 

During Captain Bush's administration of the Alabama Con- 
solidated Company, it gradually grew in importance as a factor 
in the iron making of the district. From the beginning it had 
earned and paid dividends on its preferred stock; it has also 
earned dividends on the common stock. When the captain 
retired from the management of the company and turned it 
over to his successors, the capacity of the furnaces (three finished 
and one incomplete) was figured at two hundred thousand tons 
per annum; coal mines, seven hundred and fifty thousand tons 
per annum; coke ovens, three hundred and twenty-five thousand 
tons per annum; and ore mines and rock quarry of ample ca- 
pacity for supplying all the furnaces. The company meanwhile 
had increased its obligations by issuing $1,250,000 of bonds 
which were used for retiring an equal amount of preferred 
stock, while the remainder was set aside for construction and 
improvement purposes and for acquiring additional properties. 
The total bonded indebtedness at the close of the business of 
the company, November 30, 1906, was $2,211,000. Upon the 
resignation of Captain Bush, 1 Joseph H. Hoadley was elected 
president and Guy R. Johnson vice-president and general 
manager. 

1 Colonel Bush died November 11, 1909, in Birmingham. His sudden 
death came as a great shock to his wide circle of friends in Alabama. The 
Age-Herald wrote editorially as follows: "This sad announcement will 
cause profound regret throughout Alabama. Colonel Bush was not only 
one of the best of men but he was a splendid citizen from every point of 
view. A business man of large capacity and unflagging industry, he was 
among the foremost upbuilders of the State; and all through his busy 
life he was ready to assist in every civic or benevolent movement for the 
public good. 

" Colonel Bush was a gentleman in the highest sense of that term. He 
was cultured and gentle, but always courageous and manly. He loved 
his fellow men and had long felt the truth of the saying, ' It is more blessed 
to give than receive.' He was exceptionally well equipped for public life 
and would have graced any legislative body or administrative office. 

"He will be sorely missed in this community in many ways; will be 
missed as a neighbor, missed as an active and helpful member of the 
Baptist Church, and missed as a public philanthropist. Colonel Bush's 
life was indeed an inspiration for young men and the world is all the better 
for his having lived in it. The people of Birmingham will mourn his un- 
timely end and will long cherish his memory." 

31 



482 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



Joseph Hoadley is one of the most picturesque characters in 
the modern industrial world. He has what is called the Western 
"go," and he typifies precisely what, according to John Bull, 
is "the remarkable American business man." Mr. Hoadley 
is a Calif ornian, and was born in 1864 at Marysville. His folk 
were of New England stock. The Crosby indicator and the 
Hoadley engine (which last held ground until the big Corliss 
overtopped it) were inventions of the Hoadley clan. This Hoad- 
ley boy took to a machine shop like a duck to water. He had to 
hustle for himself before he was fifteen years old, and started 
out in life as an apprentice in a, San Francisco shop, one that 
later became the Union Iron Works. He never could mark time. 
Before his term was up he jumped aboard the Pacific liner, City 
of Tokio, one day and worked his way over as one of her engi- 
neers. He saw China and Japan and got his introduction to 
steamship machinery and the science of marine engineering. He 
returned to the 'Frisco shop then and served out his time, adding 
a stroke or two at draughtsman's work and had a trial at being 
a locomotive engineer on the Southern Pacific. Then he plunged 
into the business. He set up as a contractor for mining ma- 
chinery and landed contracts " all over the State of Arizona." 
Before he was twenty-one years old he was superintendent of 
the Calico mines in Southern California. Next he went up to 
Oakland and took a contract for a door, sash, and blind factory. 
The undertaking turned out so well from a pecuniary viewpoint 
that young Hoadley began to enlarge his business, and took 
contracts which, as he states, " footed millions in the aggregate." 
Mining machinery became his specialty. He installed during 
the period from 1886 to 1894 plants in mines located not only 
in various quarters in California, but in Idaho, Washington, 
Montana, Oregon, and even in Alaska. He also contracted for 
power-house plants, for street railroads, electric-lighting plants, 
and plants for mills, factories, hotels, and huge office buildings. 

In 1894 he made Chicago his headquarters and linked his in- 
terests and operations in the far West with the chain he now 
forged in the middle West. Then he went on to New York. 
" There is scarcely a city in the country," the Wall Street Daily 
News observed, " that does not bear some testimony to the wide 
extent of Joseph Hoadley's undertakings." 

From this time forth whatever Joseph Hoadley touched had 
" millions in it." He switched off from the contracting business 



AFFAIRS OF BIRMINGHAM DISTRICT 483 



into the field of the great organizer. His first venture was the 
purchase of the Wheelock Engine Company of Worcester, Massa- 
chusetts, and the Greene engine patents. He combined the best 
features of both, renamed the plant, calling it the Greene* 
Wheelock Engine Works, and set it going at better speed and 
made it earn larger profits than it had before. At the outbreak 
of the Spanish War the famous Corliss engine works at Provi- 
dence were shut down under the burden of an eight hundred 
thousand dollar debt. Mr. Hoadley then bought this property 
which had done more to revolutionize the industrial conditions 
of the world than any other factor. Scarce was it on its feet when 
Joseph Hoadley bought another giant concern that was also suf- 
fering under a stroke of financial paralysis. It was no less than 
the Rhode Island Locomotive Works at Providence that, in the 
hands of bondholders, had not turned a wheel in three years. 
That was the big firm that since 1882 had furnished engines to 
the New York elevated branches of the New York, New Haven, 
and Hartford Railroad, the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul 
Railroad, and the Canadian Pacific. 

Thus one enterprise led to another. Just as DeBardeleben 
had gathered in properties and organized companies all over 
the Birmingham District in his day, so now did Joseph Hoadley, 
making a dozen States his checkerboard. Having now the four 
great engine works of New England under his control, Mr. 
Hoadley formed a fifth organization, the International Power 
Company, " as a holding company, to protect the interests that 
had been obtained." This company, in addition to overlooking 
the four mentioned, now assumed through its president, Mr. 
Hoadley, control of the American Ordnance Works of Bridgeport. 
This concern had shackled itself with an eight hundred thousand 
dollar debt by prematurely consolidating all the gun works of 
the United States. Hoadley^s statements show how they lifted 
the entire debt and cleared $237,000 in two years. 

Meanwhile, he still reached out, and, supported by the group 
of his New York associates, he caught up every locomotive works 
in the United States "worth getting," barring one at Philadel- 
phia. He organized that titanic industrial enterprise called the 
American Locomotive Company, a concern of national breadth, 
scope, and importance. The company was capitalized at $50,000,- 
000, $25,000,000 each of common stock and preferred. 

Mr. Joseph Hoadley now took a trip across the Atlantic. He 



484 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



stirred up London, for he got to organizing over there. He 
formed the American and British Manufacturing Company, and 
capitalized it at $10,000,000. He threw under its ownership and 
operation the American ordnance works, controlled by his 
International Power Company, his Corliss engine works, his 
Greene-Wheelock combine, and the Amoskeag Fire Engine 
Company. By this move the International Power Company was 
now majority stockholder in the American Locomotive Company 
and all its holdings, and in the American and British Manufac- 
turing Company and all its holdings. 

It seemed as if " Thibet would come next," said Mr. Hoad- 
ley's friends. But the organizer looked to the States again. One 
section alone he had failed to traverse — the South. He came, 
therefore, to Alabama just after the acquisition of the Alabama 
Consolidated Company by his great International Power Com- 
pany, and was elected, as has been mentioned, to the office of 
president. Owing to his many interests in other quarters his 
trips to the Birmingham District have necessarily been few and 
far between. 

The resident officer in charge of the company is the vice- 
president and genera] manager, Guy R. Johnson. At the time 
he was elected to this office, Mr. Johnson was operating his own 
furnace plant at Clarksville, Tennessee, and was well informed 
on the general conditions and circumstances of the iron trade in 
Alabama. His experience in iron-making covered a wide range 
of localities, for he had served at various plants in Virginia, 
Tennessee, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Illinois. His father before 
him was a furnaceman, part owner and manager of the Long- 
dale Iron Company at Longdale, Virginia. The Johnson family, 
which is of Scotch stock, had originally located in Pennsylvania. 
Oddly enough they took up farming land not far from the old 
Hillman dairy farm, and just about the same time (1744) the 
ancestors of T. T. Hillman of Alabama settled there. The ground 
to-day is one of the most high-priced sections of Philadelphia. 
Guy Johnson's maternal ancestors, the De La Roche family of 
France, have, as previously mentioned, romantic connection in 
Colonial Virginia, and were also early settlers of Baltimore. 
Mr. Johnson's wife, formerly Miss Edith Ashley Whelen, of 
Philadelphia, whom he married in 1892, counts in her ancestry 
one of the Colonial iron makers. 

Mr. Johnson's parents located in Allegheny County, Virginia, 



AFFAIRS OF BIRMINGHAM DISTRICT 485 



shortly after the Civil War, and here Guy Johnson and his 
brother were born. The Longdale furnace in which his father 
became interested in 1870, constructed very like Moses Stroup's 
Old Tannehill, was within rifle range of the Johnson home. 

" Almost my first recollection," Mr. Johnson says, " is that 
old stone charcoal stack. In those days, our furnace being located 
seven miles from the railroad, we had to haul all our material 
in wagons. A big day's output was eleven tons. This iron was 
almost all sold in the vicinity of Philadelphia for car-wheel pur- 
poses. In those early days it brought as high as $130 per ton, 
so that notwithstanding our very crude way of making iron and 
handling the product, there was a very tidy profit. 

" As time went on the charcoal furnace was torn down and 
a larger one built in its place; but owing to the constantly 
growing difficulty of obtaining charcoal for the larger furnace 
it was finally decided to change to a coke furnace. This, in 
turn, entailed the building of a railroad, connecting the furnace 
with the main line of the Chesapeake and Ohio. This same road 
was afterwards extended five miles to reach our ore mines. The 
demand for Longdale produce kept increasing, so that presently 
a second stack became necessary, and was built. 

" You see I can very readily claim that I was brought up in 
the furnace yard, because as a boy all my time was spent around 
the furnaces. The schools in that part of Virginia were few and 
far between in those days, so that finally my father had recourse 
to a tutor for myself and brother, and under his training I was 
educated until the time to go to college/' 

Mr. Johnson was graduated from Haverford College, Pennsyl- 
vania, in 1886. His first " real work," as he terms it, was in the 
office of the Malaga glass works in New Jersey. Here for one 
year he did three men's work for fifty dollars per month. " Natu- 
rally, however," as he remarked, " having been brought up in the 
iron business, glass could not hold me very long, so I went back 
to Longdale." Here he stayed for eight years as engineer and 
assistant to the manager. His work was to survey all the 
mines, and keep general oversight over them, make all the draw- 
ings for new work, and follow them through the pattern-shop 
and foundry to erection. In 1895 he was offered the personal 
managership of the Embreeville Iron Company, in Embreeville, 
Tennessee. 

" This," as he described it, u was a tf busted ' town-boom scheme 
in Washington County, Northeast Tennessee, and was property 
which, as far as value went, depended entirely upon getting out 



486 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



cheap ore. Up to this time all my energies had been bent in the 
direction of becoming a mining engineer rather than an iron 
man, and it was on account of this bent that I was selected for 
Embreeville. I stayed at Embreeville for four years, and de- 
veloped a large and valuable trade for the plant, as after investi- 
gation I found that I could make iron suitable for making mal- 
leable castings out of the Embreeville ore. This was the first 
time that such iron in large quantities had been produced South 
of the Ohio River for this purpose. 

" In 1896 our company purchased a second furnace at John- 
son City, thirteen miles from Embreeville, and at this furnace 
we made low phosphorus iron out of the well-known cranberry 
magnetic ore. This was the first time that cranberry ore had 
ever been used in a modern furnace, and was the first demon- 
stration of the fact that it could be so used." 

Like most of the ambitious iron men Mr. Johnson before long 
turned to the Pittsburg District. Desirous of getting the broader 
experience afforded by the big plants there, he took, early in 1899, 
the position of superintendent of construction and furnace super- 
intendent at the Ohio plant of the National Steel Company. 
" This," he says, " was the second plant in America to adopt the 
very high furnaces with large tonnage, the first having been the 
Duquesne furnace of the Carnegie Steel Company. In sixteen 
months we built two six-hundred-ton furnaces complete, and 
started them." After two years' successful service at this Ohio 
plant Mr. Johnson was transferred by the Carnegie Company 
to their Duquesne plant, where he remained until 1903, when he 
went to the Joliet works of the Illinois Steel Company. In a 
thirteen months' assignment he managed to break the previous 
records of the works and was then promoted to general superin- 
tendent of blast furnaces at South Chicago, where at that time 
there were ten blast furnaces. He stayed at South Chicago 
almost three years, during which time it is said that he broke all 
records repeatedly, and in addition practically rebuilt the plant. 
He left behind him plans which have since been carried out to 
a successful termination, and which were adopted with practi- 
cally no change by his successor. These plans make the South 
Chicago plant one of the most economically operated furnace 
plants in the United States. In 1905 Mr. Johnson resigned at 
South Chicago and bought an interest in the furnace plant at 
Clarksville, Tennessee, which interest he still retains. 

Immediately upon his election to office in the Alabama Con- 



AFFAIRS OF BIRMINGHAM DISTRICT 487 

solidated Company Mr. Johnson started reconstruction work in 
every department. Large sums were expended in general im- 
provements and in the installation of new machinery and up-to- 
date methods of handling raw material. In spite of the dull 
year of 1908 and the shackled condition of the iron business 
everywhere, favorable results were obtained by the Alabama Con- 
solidated. Three of the company's four furnaces were kept 
steadily in blast, and the statements for 1908 show an output 
of nearly fifty thousand tons more of pig iron than ever was 
made before by the company. The management has outlined 
a big scheme of future development. The building of additional 
plants is contemplated; the opening up of a large territory of 
coal; and the purchase of additional mineral property, while 
the improvement work is steadily going on. 



CHAPTER XXVIII 

THE MAKING OF WALKER COUNTY. PRATT CONSOLIDATED 
COAL COMPANY, GALLOWAY COAL COMPANY, CORONA 
COAL COMPANY, EMPIRE COAL COMPANY AND OTHERS 

Development of great coal county. Organization in 1904 of Pratt Consoli- 
dated Coal Company, largest commercial coal company in Southern 
States. Strong men of Birmingham District its founders. Review of 
career of T. T. Hillman, first president of company. Historic association 
of Hillman family with pioneer coal and iron business of South. For- 
mation of Pratt Coal Company, parent stock of Pratt Consolidated. 
Introduction of H. E. McCormack. Skill, foresight, and judgment shown 
in foundation building. Evolution of a coal company. Erskine Ramsay 
elected vice-president and chief engineer. Activities of Hillman, Ramsay, 
and the McCormack Brothers. M. H. Smith extends Louisville and Nash- 
ville track into Pratt Company properties. Development of new section 
of Warrior field. Significant event in coal records of State; five coal 
seams worked simultaneously by Pratt Company. Erskine Ramsay's 
"pet." Description of Banner mine. Outline of big proportions con- 
ceived for Pratt Coal Company. Nunley Ridge Coal Company and 
Walker County concerns considered for consolidation. G. B. McCormack 
succeeds to presidency. Growth of the Pratt Consolidated. Formation 
of Galloway Coal Company. Biographical sketches of Colonel Robert 
Galloway, Cyrus Garnsey, Jr., John R. Pill. Organization of Yolande 
Coal Company and Great Elk Company. Backward glance at Walker 
County operations. Beginning of Corona mines. Work of L. B. Mus- 
grove. County men in the lead. Men outside of county interested. A 
new captain steps into coal business. Record of Frank Nelson, Jr. Or- 
ganization of Empire Coal Company. 

THE development of Walker County, the greatest coal 
county of Alabama, is of distinctly present-day inter- 
est. Although the earliest coal mining operations of 
the State are associated with this county, yet the establishment 
of mines on any other than a crude and primitive scale was 
practically forbidden until recent years, owing to the lack of 
transportation facilities. 

The country, wild and thickly wooded, is in the very heart of 
the great Warrior coal field, and furnishes to-day one-fourth of 
the coal supply from Alabama. It has facilities for water trans- 
portation that few counties of the mineral region have. 

The Warrior River, formed by the junction of the Sipsey and 
Mulberry forks, flows through its eastern sections and along the 



Erskine Ramsay 
First Vice-President and Chief Engineer of Pratt Consolidated 
Coal Company 



THE MAKING OF WALKER COUNTY 489 



southeastern border. From a high ridge in the northwestern 
corner — a section of a watershed extending into Winston, 
Fayette, and Tuskaloosa counties — the waters of Big Cane, 
Blackwater, Loss, and Wolf creeks, and innumerable smaller 
streams, are sent in a southeastern direction into the Warrior 
River. The geological reports of Dr. Eugene A. Smith, the 
recent activity in railroad construction through this section, and 
the immense amount of capital invested by county men and out- 
of-the-county men, — all have combined to bring about the con- 
centration of coal development here on a larger scale than in any 
other one locality of the State. Then, too, it is all a building 
for the future here as well as for to-day, — a significant point. 
The place has immense possibilities. Every company in the field 
is reaching out to big outlines and to larger uses. 

Chief among the coal companies concentrating their opera- 
tions in this county, which are to be treated in some detail in 
these pages, are the Pratt Consolidated Coal Company, officered 
by George B. McCormack, Erskine Ramsay, and H. E. McCor- 
mack; the Galloway Coal Company, officered by Colonel Robert 
Galloway of Memphis, Cyrus Garnsey, Jr., and John R. Pill; 
the Yolande Coal and Coke Company, officered by Grattan B. 
Crowe; the Corona Coal Company, officered by L. B. Musgrove, 
and the Empire Coal Company, captained by Frank Nelson, Jr. 

The organization of the Pratt Consolidated Coal Company in 
1904 was by all odds the most important event in the Alabama 
coal world of that year. It was formed of a union of six indi- 
vidual companies : Pratt Coal Company, Nunley Ridge Coal Com- 
pany, Ivy Coal and Iron Company, Gamble Mines Company, 
Townley Mining Company, and the Tracy City mines, — the 
combined properties making, all told, a total of about eighty-five 
thousand acres in both Alabama and Tennessee. Fifty-four 
mines with an average daily capacity, under favorable conditions, 
estimated at twelve thousand tons, are operated by the company. 
It is thus not only the largest miner and seller of coal in the 
Birmingham District, but ranks as one of the largest commercial 
coal companies of the Southern States, and is rated high in point 
of productive capacity in the United States. 

The incorporators of this company were G. B. McCormack, 
T. T. Hillman, Erskine Ramsay, H. E. McCormack, and J. C. 
Patterson. The present-day officers are G. B. McCormack, presi- 
dent; Erskine Ramsay, first vice-president and chief engineer; 



490 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



H. E. McCormack, vice-president and general manager; J. A. 
Shook, secretary and treasurer; E. P. Rosamond and E. B. 
Pennington, general superintendents. 

Of the mines of the company, each of which has a separate and 
distinct railroad tipple, forty-three are in Alabama and eleven 
in Tennessee. All of the mines in Alabama are located in the 
Warrior coal field. They straddle the county lines between 
Jefferson and Walker counties and run along, mile on mile, into 
Walker, away down " between the rivers," — that rugged, thick- 
wooded country known as the Flat Creek and Coal Creek sections, 
which is bound in by the Little Warrior and the Big Warrior. 
The earliest records of coal mining in Alabama, traced back to 
the year 1827, are associated with this particular region about 
the little Warrior and its tributary streams. The Tennessee 
holdings of the Pratt Company are also closely linked with the 
pioneer history of the coal business of Tennessee. 

Chief among the founders of the Pratt Company, T. T. Hill- 
man, George B. McCormack, and Erskine Ramsay have figured 
throughout these chronicles in various chapters heretofore. As- 
sociated as these names are with the coal and iron history of 
Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania, a rather 
special degree of interest attaches to the personnel of this first 
executive board of the Pratt Consolidated Coal Company. 

T. T. Hillman, the first president of the Pratt Company, will 
always be included in the famous group of pioneer iron-masters 
of the Birmingham District known as " The Old Guard." It 
will be recalled that in 1879-80, in conjunction with Colonel 
DeBardeleben, Mr. Hillman built "Alice," the first furnace of 
the City of Birmingham, and served for years as president and 
general manager of the Alice Furnace Company. Then, becom- 
ing connected with the old Pratt Coal and Iron Company, formed 
by Enoch Ensley, Mr. Hillman served as vice-president and gen- 
eral manager of the Eusting and Alice divisions, and latterly as 
a director in the Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company, 
with whose advent in Alabama he was immediately concerned. 
Shortly after his retirement from the Tennessee Company he 
organized in 1896, with H. E. McCormack, a coal concern, the 
Pratt Company, named for that master-workman of early Ala- 
bama, Daniel Pratt. Six years later it became the principal 
factor in the making of the great Pratt Consolidated. 1 

1 In T. T. Hillman was represented the third generation of the Hillman 
family that had been associated with coal and iron records of Alabama. 



THE MAKING OF WALKER COUNTY 491 

"When the old Pratt Coal Company was organized the prop- 
erties comprised fourteen thousand five hundred and forty-eight 
acres, covering nearly all of the undeveloped drift Pratt and 
NTickleplate coal in J efferson County, and carried in addition three 
other workable seams of coal. Huge timber tracts and land for 
town sites and building purposes were also included in this 
property which had been prospected and bought up gradually 
and quietly, with good judgment and foresight, by H. E. Mc- 
Cormack, who is one of the most practical coal men in the South, 
and one of the best known in the coal ranks. 

H. E. McCormack was born in Jefferson County, Missouri, Oc- 
tober 2.2, 1861, and after the usual life of a country lad went 
to the Dakotas in the early eighties, which was the time of 
the gold excitement there. He went to Tennessee in 1884 
and got his first practical knowledge of coal-mining methods 
there. He became interested in the mining of coal in Walker 
County, Alabama, in 1892, and from then until now he has been 
in the coal and coke business for himself or in connection 
with his close associates. To his ability, foresight, and judg- 
ment is largely due the success of the Pratt Consolidated Coal 
Company. 

As a member of the firm of McCormack Brothers and Eamsay 
he is largely interested as part owner of the Atlantic Coal Com- 
pany, which, in 1906, bought the holdings of the Gulf Coke and 
Coal Company, some fifteen thousand acres of coal land lying 
along the Big Warrior and covering the mouth of Loss Creek, 
where it is thought will be located the first plant for handling 
coal by water to Mobile and intermediate points. He is also 

His grandfather, Daniel Hillman, built the first forge in Tuskaloosa County 
in 1829-30 at Tannehill. The site and adjacent ore properties are owned 
to-day by the Republic Iron and Steel Company. T. T. Hillman's father, 
Daniel Hillman, Jr., prospected through Jones Valley shortly after the 
war, as has been related, and purchased the ore properties on Red Moun- 
tain known to-day as Songo mines which are operated by the Birmingham 
Coal and Iron Company. The name of Hillman is also associated with early 
records of iron making in five States besides Alabama: Pennsylvania, 
New Jersey, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee, while in Holland members 
of this family were iron makers for centuries. 

T. T. Hillman was interested in various other lines apart from the coal 
and iron industry. He served as president and director of the old Birming- 
ham Railway and Electric Company and was for twenty-one years a direc- 
tor and stockholder in the First National Bank. He was, in fact, the last 
of the original board of directors of this bank. His death occurred August 
4, 1905, and he was buried in Nashville, Tennessee. The town of Hillman, 
Alabama, is named for him, as are the Hotel Hillman and Hillman 
Hospital in the city of Birmingham. 



492 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



interested in other lands and enterprises of the Birmingham 
District. 

While George B. McCormack was serving as an officer of the 
Tennessee Company, H. E. McCormack was out in the field for 
himself, prospecting and gathering in various of the rich coal 
properties that now make up the Pratt Consolidated Coal Com- 
pany. He has prospected, they say, over pretty nearly every square 
foot of the Warrior field. He is a most indefatigable worker, 
keen, quiet, and alert. He never occupies any position publicly 
until he has it stockaded and double bastioned beforehand. He 
was secretary, treasurer, and general manager of the old Pratt 
Coal Company from its formation until the event of consolida- 
tion, when he was elected vice-president and general manager 
of the new concern. 

At the outset H. E. McCormack adopted the policy of market- 
ing his coal almost entirely on annual contract, and this proved 
the means of keeping his mines in steady and continuous opera- 
tion. During the first two years their coal was disposed of solely 
to a few furnace companies of the Birmingham District for coke 
making. In 1900 the tremendous tracts of coal lands near the 
Walker line were without railroad facilities. The Pratt Com- 
pany's one little mine at the start (in 1899) was " Old Nebo," a 
drift on the Pratt Seam, which was located on the Southern Rail- 
way about seventeen miles west of Birmingham. Other drift 
mines were gradually developed on the Pratt, Nickleplate, and 
Big Seams. All of the mines were self-draining, and owing to 
the cheap haulage secured, the steady labor, and the continuous 
output maintained, the Pratt Coal Company shortly achieved 
the reputation of giving the cheapest coal of good quality put 
out in the State. The development work was pushed quietly, 
economically, and intelligently, always on a scale commensurate 
with the means of the owners. No "picturesque methods" or 
grand-stand plays were indulged in. The company simply dug 
coal and sold all it could mine. Results showed up before long. 
By the end of 1903 it was operating eighteen mines, and owned 
a total of eight hundred tenement houses, fourteen churches and 
schoolhouses, eight stores and warehouses. The stockholders now 
were T. T. Hillman, Erskine Ramsay, H. E. McCormack, C. A. 
Nolan, Gr. B. McCormack, and J. C. Patterson, and the capitaliza- 
tion of the company was increased to $1,000,000. From 1894 to 
1904 Mr. H. E. McCormack, with T. T. Hillman, C. A. Nolan, 



THE MAKING OF WALKER COUNTY 493 

and J. C. Patterson, had been active in organizing and develop- 
ing various coal companies. There were eight of these concerns, 
all told, as follows: 

1. Mountain Valley Coal and Coke Company, in "Walker 
County, organized in 1894, and sold to Judge Cook in fall of 
1902. 

2. Pratt Coal Company organized June, 1896. This company 
opened New Pratt and Togo mines. 

3. Globe Coal Company organized October, 1899. This 
company originally owned the property where are now located 
Banner slope and Shaft mines. 

4. Pratt Coal Company of Delaware organized July, 1902. 
This company took over the mines and properties of the Pratt (2) 
and Globe companies (3). 

5. Nunley Ridge Coal Company, Tennessee, organized July, 
1903. This property was developed by E. L. Hampton. 

6. Ivy Coal and Iron Company organized February, 1904. 
This property was purchased in February, 1904, by G. B. McCor- 
mack and Erskine Ramsay, and was put into the Pratt Consoli- 
dated Coal Company by them when it was organized in Decem- 
ber, 1904. It owned and operated the Dora mines, Nos. 4-6-8-10, 
and Davis. 

7. Townley Mining Company organized July, 1904. This 
property was purchased and the Mammoth mine opened in 1904 
by G. B. McCormack, H. E. McCormack, J. C. Patterson, E. P. 
Rosamond, and Erskine Ramsay. It went into the Pratt Con- 
solidated Coal Company when it was organized December, 1904. 

8. Gamble mines and property organized October, 1904. 
This property was operated by the Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Rail- 
road Company on a twenty-year lease, which expired March 2, 
1908. The property was purchased from the Gamble heirs (Jas- 
per, Alabama) by G. B. McCormack and Erskine Ramsay Oc- 
tober, 1904, and was put into the Pratt Consolidated Coal Com- 
pany when it was organized, December, 1904. 

Through the action of M. H. Smith, the Louisville and Nash- 
ville Railroad Company started the construction of a branch line, 
— the Cane Creek branch, — twenty-five miles long, into the 
undeveloped section of the Warrior coal field. Fifteen miles of 
the railroad ran direct through the Pratt Company's properties. 
Additional mines were opened on the Pratt, Mckleplate, and Big 
seams, and small slopes on the Jefferson and Black Creek seams. 
Thus the five seams of coal were worked simultaneously in 1903 
by the Pratt Coal Company, an achievement up to that year 
never before attained by any single mining property in the Bir- 



494 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



mingham District. No company in Alabama had ever worked 
more than two seams at the same time. The Louisville and 
Nashville track was completed to seven of the company's mines 
by May 1, 1903 ; the loading of coal began on a great scale, and 
this part of the country, the famous Warrior field, woke up from 
its century's sleep. The heart of the coal country of Alabama 
now beat with new life and energy. Just as the Birmingham 
Mineral, under M. H. Smith's lead, unlocked the riches of Red 
Mountain back in the eighties, so now, nearly a generation later, 
the Louisville and Nashville Railroad disclosed the treasures of 
the remote and long-settled yet wealthiest region of the great 
coal field. 

By the late summer of 1903 the railroad had reached Banner, 
the one shaft mine of the Pratt Company, about twenty-five 
miles from Birmingham, and coal was first hoisted from this 
point on August 1 of that year. Out of Banner, the company's 
"prize mine," which had once been a meager drift opened 
in the Big Seam in October, 1902, there has been made a coal 
mine strictly up to the highest standard. It is located in 
Jefferson County, near the Walker line, and, including both 
shaft and slope output, has a daily capacity estimated at two 
thousand tons. 

This was the first mine in the Birmingham District to install 
electric haulage, electric coal cutting, and electric lighting. The 
revolving dumps invented by Erskine Ramsay are installed on 
the tipple floor. The washery in connection with the tipple 
has one hundred and twenty tons hourly capacity and is used in 
preparing the fine coal for power-plant use in stoker furnaces. 
The entire mine is practically the work of Erskine Ramsay, and 
is spoken of in the company as his " pet." Mr. Ramsay became 
associated early in 1902 with the old Pratt Coal Company as 
vice-president and chief engineer after he resigned from the 
Tennessee Company. The account of the interesting record of 
his early life in the coke regions of Pennsylvania, and of his 
fifteen years' service in the Tennessee Company, has been 
given in preceding chapters. He is to-day one of the leading en- 
gineers of the Birmingham District and is associated with many 
enterprises apart from the mining business. 

Late in 1902, after his resignation from the Woodward Iron 
Company, George B. McCormack also became an officer in the 
Pratt Coal Company. Mr. McCormack's career has been fol- 



Pratt Consolidated Coal Company Mines 




1. Mammoth Mine, Walker County 

2. Banner Mine, near Littleton, Jefferson County 

3. Flat Creek Mine No. 2, Flat Creek, Walker County 



THE MAKING OF WALKER COUNTY 495 



lowed step by step in these pages. Starting out in life as a tele- 
graph operator, taking the first job that offered itself in the old 
Tennessee Company when it was struggling along up in the Ten- 
nessee Mountains, he rose by slow degrees to a position of com- 
mand and influence in that company, acting as general manager 
for many years, introducing the making of basic iron on a com- 
mercially successful scale, and serving with the company during 
the period when its richest properties were acquired, when the 
first steel plant was built, when the first exports of pig iron to 
foreign countries were made, and when pig iron was made and 
sold for less than six dollars a ton. Upon a change of adminis- 
tration in the Tennessee Company and the incoming of Don 
Bacon in 1901 as president, Mr. McCormack resigned and en- 
tered the service of the Woodward Iron Company as vice-presi- 
dent, and with this concern he remained until he entered the 
service of the Pratt Coal Company. 

With such practical and experienced mining men back of it, 
it was little wonder that this company by 1904 became so pro-^ 
nounced a factor in the coal business of the district. The fact 
that the company carried five workable seams, that transporta- 
tion facilities were afforded by both Louisville and Nashville and 
the Southern Eailway, that cheap haulage, steady labor, and a 
continuous output of drift coal could be maintained from twenty 
to twenty-five years, all combined to give it certain particular 
advantages. But a form of bigger outlines was being drawn, a 
reaching out into the future. More railroads were needed, as 
well as a waterway to the Gulf of Mexico and larger bodies of 
coal lands. The consolidation of the Pratt Company with vari- 
ous other strong coal concerns was then considered. The prop- 
erties that came under consideration were the Nunley Eidge and 
other Hampton properties in Tennessee, and the other concerns 
already mentioned as operating in Walker County. 

The Nunley Eidge Coal Company is situated on the Cumber- 
land Plateau in Grundy and Marion counties in Tennessee. 
It is practically the last tract of undeveloped coal land on Big 
Mountain and is said to be the best of the Sewanee Seam left 
untouched in the Tracy City District. The early history of all 
this region has been detailed in the chapters which relate to the 
Tennessee Company. The Nunley Eidge property, together with 
the individual coal land holdings of E. L. Hampton, comprised 
over five thousand acres, and at the time of the consolidation of 



496 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



the company with the Pratt Coal Company, four drift mines 
were in operation with a daily capacity of eight hundred tons. 
Mr. Hampton, who had been in the employ of the Nashville and 
Chattanooga Railway for many years and had been president and 
principal owner of the Nunley Ridge Coal Company, became in- 
terested in the Pratt Consolidated. 

The properties of the other companies considered for the Pratt 
Consolidated were the Ivy Coal and Iron Company, Gamble 
Mines Company, and Townley Mining Company and are all 
located in Alabama. All of the operations of the Ivy Company 
are on the Big Seam in Walker County. Both the Southern 
and the Frisco railroads pass directly through all of these 
mines and the Warrior River, now being slack-watered by the 
Government, runs along its western border for several miles. 
Facilities for water transportation to Mobile and intermediate 
points will thus in time be afforded. This property, known as 
Davis and Victor, was originally owned and developed by W. C. 
Shackleford, J. V. Allen, and Walter Moore, whose connection 
with Colonel Ensley has been previously noted. 

The Gamble Mines Company and the Townley Mining Com- 
pany are located on the same tract of land in the neighborhood 
of Jasper, the county seat of Walker County. The Big Seam 
outcrops on this property, and it also carries the Jefferson and 
Black Creek coals. Its first ownership is traceable to descen- 
dants of one of " Old Hickory's " soldiers. Another property 
in Walker County subsequently brought into the consolidation 
was the Lockhart property, containing twenty-one thousand 
acres of undeveloped coal lands drained by the Warrior and 
carrying all the five great seams. 

In the month of December, 1904, the consolidation of all these 
rich properties was effected with the Pratt Coal Company and 
the greatest commercial coal organization in Alabama history 
was solidly and soundly established, with five separate railroads 
reaching direct to their mines — the Louisville and Nashville, 
the Southern, Central of Georgia, Frisco in Alabama, and the 
Nashville, Chattanooga, and St. Louis in Tennessee. 

Upon the death of T. T. Hillman, the first president of the 
company, in the summer following the event of the consolida- 
tion, George B. McCormack succeeded to the presidency, which 
he occupies at the present day. He and his associate officers 
have made of the Pratt Consolidated Coal Company a complete 



THE MAKING OF WALKER COUNTY 497 



industrial unit, a tremendous factor in the industrial history 
of the South. The management includes only local men and 
they stand for local interests. Their wealth has been put into 
local undertakings, and their plans directed towards local 
emprise. 

The growth of the Galloway Coal Company, which is now 
the third largest producer of commercial coal in the South, has 
been, like that of the Pratt Consolidated, a gradual process. 
This company went into the coal business twenty-odd years ago 
with only one mine, — "the original drift of Carbon Hill." 
Now it has eight mines located in five counties, and the cars of 
six trunk lines pass by their tipples, the Louisville and Nashville, 
Southern, Northern, Alabama, Mobile, and Ohio, Frisco, and 
Central of Georgia railroads. The annual capacity of the mines 
figures up to very nearly a million tons. All the company's mining 
is done by electricity and it employs three thousand men. Coal 
from the Galloway mines is used from the Atlantic seaboard to 
Texas, while large quantities are yearly exported through the Gulf 
ports. The general offices of the company are located in Memphis, 
Tennessee, and its Alabama headquarters are in the Brown-Marx 
building in Birmingham, as are those of the Pratt Consolidated 
Company ^ and the Yolande, Corona, Empire, and the Great Elk 
companies. 

The officers of the Galloway Company are Colonel Eobert 
Galloway of Memphis, president; B. R. Henderson, vice- 
president; Cyrus Garnsey, Jr., general manager, secretary, and 
treasurer; and John R. Pill, general superintendent. In 1906 
the Choctaw Coal and Mining Company, a Tennessee corporation, 
was formed to operate all of the mines of the Galloway Coal 
Company. The officers of this company are as follows: Cyrus 
Garnsey, Jr., president; John R. Pill, vice-president and general 
manager; B. R. Henderson, secretary; Robert Galloway, chair- 
man of the board of directors. The superintendents of the 
Choctaw Coal and Mining Company are men who are for the 
most part veterans in coal mining in Alabama. They are George 
A. Davis, superintendent Garnsey Mine, Alabama; George R. 
Davis, superintendent Savage Creek, Alabama; B. D. Leath, 
superintendent No. 5 Mine, Carbon Hill, Alabama; James 
Nicol, superintendent No. 6 Mine, Carbon Hill, Alabama ; 
John Lang, superintendent Chickasaw Mine, Chickasaw, Ala- 

32 



498 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



bama, and D. J. Parker, who is assistant general superintendent 
of the Walker County plants. 

The founder of the Galloway Company was its president, Colo- 
nel Robert Galloway, who, together with his associates in the 
Patterson Transfer Company of Memphis, Tennessee, purchased 
the Walker County properties of the Kansas City Coal and 
Coke Company, which started operations in the eighteen-eighties, 
and under the management of Colonel R. H. Elliott (formerly 
connected with the DeBardeleben Coal and Iron Company) 
opened the first mine at Carbon Hill, but did not enter upon ex- 
tensive work. It has been under the Galloway administration 
that the property has reached its present-day development and 
importance in the Southern mining world. 

Robert Galloway was born on November 6, 1843, in London, 
England, and when very young was brought to the United States 
by his father. After a few years' schooling at St. Louis, Missouri, 
and at Keokuk, Iowa, he started into business as a river clerk 
at Memphis, Tennessee. In the last year of the Civil War he 
entered the employ of the Memphis and Charleston Railroad as 
a clerk, and two years later went into partnership with P. M. 
Patterson in the transfer business, purchasing an interest in the 
firm and taking over at once the active management of its 
business. 

This was an old-established concern. Its founder, P. M. Pat- 
terson, had come to Memphis in the eighteen-forties as agent 
for a stage line which ran from the western terminus of the rail- 
road, at La Grange, Tennessee, to Memphis. When the railroad 
reached Memphis (in 1856) Mr. Patterson started an omnibus 
line of his own. The old firm was to that portion of Tennessee 
what the Jemison, Powell, and Ficklen Company was to Central 
Alabama. In 1889 it was incorporated under the name of the 
Patterson Transfer Company, and it is now the largest warehouse 
and transfer company in the South, being the exclusive bonded 
agent of every railroad entering Memphis. Colonel Galloway 
became actively identified with civic, commercial, and philan- 
thropic interests of his community in the succeeding years. In 
1890 he was appointed park commissioner of Memphis, and is 
to-day chairman of the board of park commission, is a director in 
the State National Bank, and a member of many of the impor- 
tant clubs of the South, while still retaining the presidency of 
the Patterson Transfer Company, the Galloway Coal Company, 



THE MAKING OF WALKER COUNTY 499 



and acting as chairman of the board of directors of the Choctaw 
Coal Mining Company. 

Cyrus Garnsey, Jr., general manager, secretary, and treasurer 
of the Galloway Coal Company and president of the Choctaw 
Coal and Mining Company, is a native of New York State. 
When he first came to Birmingham he was connected with the 
K. C. M. and B. E. R. (now the Frisco system) as auditor, but 
in 1899 he went into the coal business. 

John R. Pill, general superintendent of the Galloway Coal 
Company and vice-president and general manager of the Choc- 
taw Coal and Mining Company, was born in 1866 in the tin- 
mining district of Cornwall, England, the old home of the Noble 
family of iron-masters. He is of Scotch-English parentage and 
for generations his folk have been in the mining business, not 
only in Cornwall, but in various parts of the world. He was 
educated in France, England, and Newfoundland. In 1885 he 
entered the Newfoundland Government engineering service and 
two years later was sent to Baffin Land in charge of an exploring 
party, after which he came to the United States and continued 
in engineering work until his entrance into the Birmingham 
District as assistant engineer of the Southern Railroad in 1894. 
In 1901 Mr. Pill entered the service of the Galloway Coal Com- 
pany. He is a member of the American Institute of Mining 
Engineers and an associate member of the American Society of 
Civil Engineers. 

Coincident with the formation of the Pratt Consolidated Coal 
Company was the organization of the Yolande Coal and Coke 
Company by Grattan B. Crowe. Early in 1904 he acquired pos- 
session of many acres of coal lands in the southeastern part of the 
Warrior Basin, purchasing the property on credit, and starting 
into the mining business . without one dollar's capital. Within 
two years his mines were turning out several hundred tons of 
coal per day, and Dr. Crowe began to invest in other mineral 
lands throughout the counties of Tuskaloosa, Jefferson, Bibb, 
and Walker, until he had in his individual control many thou- 
sand acres of iron ore lands, coking and domestic coal-producing 
lands, and fire-clay lands. By the year 1907, besides being presi- 
dent of the Yolande Coal and Coke Company, he was president 
of four other companies which he organized. They were the 
Abernant Coal Company, the New Connellsville Coal and Coke 
Company, the Black Crow Coal Company, and the Ashby Brick 



500 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



Company. The fact that his combined companies mined more 
than three hundred thousand tons of coal in that year brought 
Gratton Crowe up to the place of fourth largest commercial coal 
operator in Alabama. 

Dr. Crowe has had an interesting and decidedly melodramatic 
career. He is a native of Alabama, although in 1870 his father 
was governor of New Mexico. He was born on August 23, 1865, 
at Marion, Alabama, and spent his boyhood days in Perry and 
Bibb counties. He studied medicine, and began his practice in 
old Brierfield, when the historic plant at that picturesque locality 
was under the direction of Major Thomas Peter. It was here, in 
fact, that the young country doctor first became interested in 
the iron business. After the collapse of the furnaces and the 
abandonment of the place in 1889, he went abroad and took a 
course of medicine in Edinburgh, Scotland. Early in the nine- 
ties he returned to Alabama, and again became a country doctor 
and a politician. Affiliating with the populist party, he was 
nominated for governor of Alabama on the populist ticket; he 
failed and again went abroad. On this second European tour 
Dr. Crowe took up the study of geology, and returning to Ala- 
bama concentrated all his energies and interests on investigat- 
ing the endless resources of the Birmingham District. He went 
out in the field on long prospecting tours, centering his investi- 
gations mainly upon the Cahaba field and the Blue Creek section 
of the Warrior field. Every personal asset he had he threw into 
his new work. He acquired the Garnsey mines and the Hender- 
son Coal Company, which he eventually sold to the Galloway Coal 
Company of Memphis; with W. E. Leake he organized the 
Davis Creek Coal Company, which is now operated by J. C. 
Maben, Jr.; then, in 1904, as has been mentioned, came the 
organization of his first individual company, the Yolande, and 
the others followed in rapid succession. 

The properties of the Great Elk Company and the Samoset 
Coal Company, owned by H. S. Jenkins and E. I. Jenkins of 
Baltimore, Maryland, are located in Walker County, on the Frisco 
line. The Samoset lands back up on the Pratt Consolidated 
lands near Dora, and the Great Elk properties are near Carbon 
Hill, west of Jasper. The Jenkins brothers became actively in- 
terested in the coal business of Alabama about the time of the 
Spanish War, when as the lessee people of the Mary Lee proper- 
ties at Lewisburg they entered the ranks of the coal operators of 



THE MAKING OF WALKER COUNTY 501 



Walker County. The Great Elk Company was organized by them 
in 1900, and the first mine, a sixty-foot shaft, was opened at 
Carbon Hill in that year. 

Most of the Walker County mining operations have points of 
similarity. What is true of one mine is, in general, true of all. 
The history of a large number of them is traced back to the 
pioneer work set afoot here mainly by Walter Moore, Enoch 
Ensley, Henry W. Milner, L. B. Musgrove, and J. C. Musgrove. 
Among the county men who have been most active in the renais- 
sance of business enterprise here are Judge F. A. Gamble, Colonel 
B. M. Long, Judge J. B. Shields, Judge J. J. Hayes, W. G. 
Gravlee, Judge James W. Shepherd, Dr. W. C. Rosamond, L. B. 
and J. C. Musgrove, John King, T. S. Hendon, David Kirkwood, 
John Ryan, A. McDonald, Bryan and Gus Whitfield, Robert 
Palmer, H. P. Gibson, George S. Gaines, C. C. Kelley. Among 
the out-of-the-county men, in addition to these so far mentioned, 
have been Joseph F. Johnston, General R. Coulter, General J. W. 
Burke, W. E. Leake, Culpepper Exum, Gaylord B. Clark, Mark 
Lyons, Adam Glass, Dr. 0. L. Crumpton, James McPhillip, 
Nathaniel W. Trimble, L. B. McFarland, J. 0. Banks, J. S. 
Billups, James Gallagher, General E. W. Rucker, T. C. Leake, 
Thomas and E. J. Dunn, J. B. Carrington, R. 0. Middleton, 
T. H. Friel, J. D. Hooper, Belton Gilreath, J. C. Neeley, and 
Judge Peyton Norvell. 

Incidents relating to antebellum days of this county have been 
given in an earlier chapter. A brief resume of conditions follow- 
ing the early period which was prepared for this work by Joel C. 
Du Bose is as follows: 

" The disturbances of war during the four years from 1861 to 
1865 forced almost complete abandonment of all industries in 
Walker County, save those connected with farming and with other 
means of securing the actual necessaries of life. An occasional 
boat-load of coal was shipped by the Sanderses, the Phillipses, the 
Burtons, the Bordens, and others. A large cotton mill, factories 
for woodwork, coke ovens, and sixty-two mines in active opera- 
tion, and an immense lumber and brick business are among the 
chief industries developed since the war. 

" The changed conditions after the war demanded time for 
the readjustment of business and the reopening of commercial 
relations. The report of Professor Michael Tuomey upon the 
geological structure of portions of the county had directed atten- 
tion to the vast coal measures, and the maps of the county and 
the report of its soils and coal and lumber resources by Dr. 



502 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



Eugene A. Smith, the State geologist, in 1876, had again quick- 
ened the thought of the country to the wonderful richness of the 
coal deposits and other resources. The mineral and timber lands 
invited large investments of capital. The building of railroads, 
the erection of planing-mills, sawmills, and a large cotton mill, 
and the opening of mines and rock quarries, together with the 
establishment of mercantile business and the higher develop- 
ment of farming interests, called millions of dollars into the 
county. Men of the county joined with progressive capitalists 
abroad and gave their energies, money, and thought to the de- 
velopment of industrial business. 

" Mine operators anticipated the coming of railroads. The 
opening of Corona mines was begun on August 14, 1883. The 
opening of Patton mines was begun about the same time. Tipples 
were constructed, and coal was piled in waiting for the coming 
of trains. Right of way was secured for the Georgia Pacific 
Railway, now the Southern Railway. This road was building 
from the west, and when it reached Alta, in Fayette County, in 
1884, about five miles from the Corona and Patton mines, coal 
was hauled in wagons to the railroad and shipped to Columbus, 
Mississippi. Not much was hauled from the Corona mines, but 
Leake and Dunn Brothers, who opened Patton mines, and who 
were also railroad contractors, used their teams for hauling a 
great deal of coal to the railroad. The coal brought $6.50 a ton 
in Columbus. 

" In order to protect their contract rights by entering Walker 
County according to time agreement, the builders of the rail- 
road rushed an improvised track to Corona. On this track five 
Mobile and Ohio cars were sent to Corona, and on these cars 
David Kirkwood, superintendent of the Corona mines, shipped 
the first coal ever loaded on cars within the limits of Walker 
County. This was on a Sunday morning in 1884. Five hundred 
people had gathered from the surrounding country to see the 
train. 

" The president of the Corona Coal Company was General R. 
Coulter, and the vice-president was Mr. L. B. Musgrove. This 
was the inauguration of the modern era of coal mining in Walker 
County. Mr. James Cain, the grandfather of Mr. Musgrove, was 
partner of Jesse Van Hoose in the ownership of the lands on 
which was sunk the first coal shaft in the county. 

" In 1886 Dr. Eugene A. Smith, the State geologist, and Pro- 
fessor Henry A. McCalley, made a full report of the coal de- 
posits and timber wealth of Walker County. Before this, they 
had made a report on the river resources from Mulberry Fork 
to Tuskaloosa. These reports confirmed the estimates of ex- 
perts sent by capitalists. After the completion of the Georgia 
Pacific Railroad mines were opened at Patton Junction and in 
Coal Valley. The Kansas City, Memphis, and Birmingham Rail- 
road was completed in 1889. This is now the Frisco Railroad. 



THE MAKING OF WALKER COUNTY 503 



A little after the completion of this road the Birmingham, Shef- 
field, and Tennessee Eiver Railroad (now the Northern Alabama) 
was constructed as a feeder to the Kansas City, Memphis, and 
Birmingham. Spur tracks ran from these main lines to mines 
along their routes. A short road — the Central of Alabama — 
now runs northeast from Jasper to Manchester. By the business 
energy and pluck of Captain Jack Cranford and other progres- 
sive, patriotic merchants and developers, this road will be pushed 
on to Decatur. Coal mines were now opened rapidly through- 
out the county. Day's Gap, Bruce mines, Pocahontas, Great Elk, 
West Carbon, No. 5 Carbon Hill, Chickasaw, Calumet, Mountain 
Valley, America, Annie Mae, Davis, Black Creek, Gas Light 
No. 1, Tuskaloosa, and Victor mines were opened. Since 1898 
forty other mines have been opened. The coal output of the 
county for 1907 was three million two hundred and forty thou- 
sand eight hundred and seventy-one tons. 

" Splendid water power and mineral springs are found in the 
county. Large shipments of hickory timber are made to northern 
factories for the manufacture of buggy shafts. The rich bottom 
lands and the red soil of the uplands produce bounteously of corn 
and cotton and of other staple crops. 

" Jasper, the county seat, is a fast-growing town, with large 
mercantile interests and numerous industrial enterprises. Its 
new courthouse of gray stone is nearing completion. A Con- 
federate monument in the courthouse square tells of patriotic 
citizenship. The industries of the town are a grist and flour 
mill, a tannery, a harness factory, a concrete block plant, an ice 
plant, a light and power plant, a sawmill and a planing-mill 
and coke ovens. Jasper is still the center of a big farming and 
mining and lumber manufacturing section of country. It is 
well situated at the junction of the Frisco, Southern, Northern 
Alabama, and Central of Alabama railroads." 

Foremost among the new men in the coal business of Walker 
County is Frank Nelson, Jr., president of the Empire Coal Com- 
pany, and in 1909 president of the Chamber of Commerce. Al- 
though identified with the Birmingham District but a very 
few years, Mr. Nelson has shown so progressive a spirit and such 
extraordinary activity that he has reached a position of strength 
and influence in the community, and is regarded as one of the 
most successful coal operators of the district. 

In 1904 Mr. Nelson, together with the Steiner Brothers (who 
are bankers in Birmingham), organized the Empire Coal Com- 
pany, succeeding the Empire Coal and Coke Company 1 in the 

1 The properties of the Empire Coal and Coke Company were originally 
owned by Henry W. Milner and the Birmingham firm of Rogers, Brown 
and Company. Mr. Milner, the son of the engineer, John T. Milner, founder 



504 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



possession of fourteen thousand acres of coal lands situate in 
the northeastern section of Walker County, near the borders of 
Jefferson, Blount, and Cullman counties. The property is 
reached by a branch railroad, nine miles in length, owned by 
the company, and connected with the Frisco System at Bergens, 
Alabama. 

With a capitalization of $640,000 the Empire Coal Company 
began, on a progressive scale, the development of its holdings 
which had been dormant for a number of years. It has expended 
more than $200,000 in the reconstruction of the plant, the in- 
stallation of modern mining machinery, and the betterment of 
the property in other important details. The result is that the 
annual production of coal has been increased from fifty thousand 
tons to two hundred thousand tons, a larger output, proportion- 
ately, than that of any other coal property on the Black Creek 
Seam. 

The lands of the company are underlaid with two seams of 
coal, — the Black Creek and the Jefferson, — both of which are 
being worked. Estimates show that in the section of the Black 
Creek Seam alone, which is within the company's borders, more 
than thirty million tons of coal remain to be mined. 

The Empire Company's equipment includes an endless rope 
haulage system; two large Ingersoll air compressors; twenty- 
five undercutting machines ; a large fan furnishing an unlimited 
supply of air in the working rooms ; a coal-washing installation, 
and a revolving screen which classifies the coal in four sizes, — 
No. 1 Lump, No. 2 Lump, Nut, and Slack. There is also a bat- 
tery of one hundred coke ovens of the beehive type, which is 
fed with slack from the Black Creek Seam, and is in continual 
operation. The reputation of Empire coke as a foundry coke 
extends to the Pacific coast and into Mexico, where a large pro- 
portion of the output is shipped. 

The camp of the Empire stands on a plateau, high, healthful, 
and picturesque, which covers an area of several miles. It is, in 
fact, a town of no small size, containing two hundred and fifty 
homes for operatives, on streets lined with shade trees, store- 
houses, offices, markets, churches, schoolhouses, and other con- 
veniences and privileges, including a complete system of water 
works. 

of Birmingham, was practically brought up to the coal business, and has 
been continuously identified with coal operations in various quarters of the 
mineral regions ever since the eighties. 




Frank Nelson, Jr. 
President of Empire Coal Company 



THE MAKING OF WALKER COUNTY 505 



The mining operations of the company are now under the 
superintendence of J. M. Gray, formerly chief mine inspector of 
Alabama, who has had years of experience in coal mining. A 
Georgian by birth, Mr. Gray entered the Birmingham District 
as a boy in 1886. He worked throughout various counties of the 
mineral region with the Raglin Coal Company, Henry Ellen, 
Magella Coal Company, Galloway Coal Company, and the Sloss 
Iron and Steel Company, until 1901, when he was appointed 
assistant State mine inspector. In 1903 he became chief in- 
spector, with Mr. Hillhouse and J. M. Russell as assistant inspec- 
tors. In January, 1909, Mr. Gray resigned to accept position 
with Mr. Nelson's company. 

Back of the management of the Empire Company from the 
very day of its reorganization the power of Frank Nelson has 
made itself felt. In addition to being an exceedingly practical 
business man, Mr. Nelson has strong executive ability, and he 
is an indefatigable worker. He is an Alabamian by birth and 
was born at Columbiana, Shelby County, during the Civil War. 
After leaving the University of Alabama he took up the charcoal 
business. His father, H. S. Nelson, was the first man in the 
State to modernize the system of charcoal burning and it was he 
who made the first brick ovens ever used in the South. Frank Nel- 
son, Jr., later improved on this system and organized the manu- 
facture of charcoal on a large basis, and contracted to furnish 
as much as seventy-five thousand bushels charcoal a month to feed 
both the Bibb and Shelby furnaces. He acquired several thousand 
acres of timber lands in both counties and established two 
towns, — Nelson Switch, his shipping point in Shelby, and 
British, in Bibb. For years he lived in camp in the heart of 
the woods. In 1896 he sold his big timber tracts to the Shelby 
Iron Company and went into the banking business in Anniston. 
From this point in 1901 he took up new ventures in Birmingham. 
He captained a realty company for one thing, and acquiring pos- 
session of large properties in North Birmingham, he organized 
the North Birmingham Land Company, and set to work, as 
had Powell and DeBardeleben in the old days, to bring in di- 
versified industries. He was instrumental in the establishment 
of thirty manufacturing plants in this particular locality, and 
within four years the population of this suburb of Birmingham 
increased from 1500 to 7000 souls, and under Mr. Nelson's lead, 
the place eventually became a part of Greater Birmingham. 



506 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 

Mr. Nelson has applied to the management of his coal company 
the same general tactics he has employed in his other successful 
enterprises. There is in him a good deal of the spirit of the 
old pioneer, — the onward look, — the grit and the enterprise 
and the ability to " do things." He has ideas of development 
along progressive and liberal lines, and is a public-spirited man 
in every sense of the word, as his present administration as 
president of the Chamber of Commerce shows. 



CHAPTER XXIX 



THE TRIUMPH OF THE T. C. I. 



New syndicate acquires control of Tennessee Company. Necessity for a 
steel man at head of concern. Brief review of steel mill project. Don 
H. Bacon resigns as 'chief executive of T. C. I. Strong financial men of 
country become new" owners. John A. Topping of Ohio elected chair- 
man of executive committee. Review of his policy with Tennessee 
Company. Sketch of Mr. Topping's career. Glimpse into Ohio field. 
Appointment of young Frank Hearne Crockard of West Virginia to 
captain Tennessee Company. Backward glance of Mr. Crockard's 
work. Complete reorganization of Tennessee Company. Legitimate 
development work gets its first foothold in affairs of this company. 
Inauguration of great scheme of iron and steel making. Bird's-eye view 
of Ensley steel plant. Modern features introduced by Crockard. Panic 
times hit country. Behind the scenes on Wall Street. Crisis in affairs 
of Moore and Schley banking firm. Conference of the great financiers. 
Proposition to sell majority stock of Tennessee Company to United 
States Steel Corporation put up to John Pierpont Morgan. Theodore 
Roosevelt's hand in this "panic-relief measure." Tennessee Com- 
pany is merged into Steel Corporation. Sensation of the Street. 
How Alabama received the great news. Richard H. Edmond's com- 
prehensive review of situation. Appointment by United States Steel 
Corporation of a new president of T. C. I., George Gordon Crawford. 
Biographical sketch of Mr. Crawford. His start in iron and steel busi- 
ness in Pittsburg as chemist in laboratory of Edgar Thomson Steel 
Works. Practical nature of his theories. Hard work and rapid promo- 
tion. His achievements as manager of National Department of National 
Tube Company. Administration of Tennessee Company affairs. Present- 
day organization of great company. Resume of former administrations. 
Era of great expansion inaugurated. Immense capital invested by 
Steel Corporation in T. C. I. properties. Provision of adequate water 
supply made at last. Summary of Gordon Crawford's work. The 
modern spirit quickens Alabama. 



legitimate development of its properties was a fact that Don H. 
Bacon (elected president in 1902) at length found out, as had 
his predecessors. The company was still being made a Wall 
Street football. While it fairly shouted for reconstruction work, 
its directors failed to countenance that reconstruction when set 




HAT the Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company 
was not being run by the new syndicate that acquired 
control of the stock in 1901, with any notion as to the 



508 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



afoot. During the first four years of the Bacon administration 
the actual value of the properties was increased by over $5,250,000 
but their book value remained practically stationary. Dividends 
were withheld from the stockholders and the full benefit of the 
improvements introduced was naturally not realized. The 
demand was for steel, more steel. 

Don Bacon was not a steel man nor had he ever yet tackled 
the manufacturing end of a concern. He employed experts 
to inspect the Ensley plant and made such improvements as 
he could with the means at his command. That the mistakes of 
construction in the original mill — if chargeable at all in a 
case where the industry had to be applied to new conditions 
and raw materials — should be charged largely to the engineer- 
ing concern that had the building of the plant, is the feeling 
generally prevalent in Birmingham. None of the men connected 
with the former regime of the Tennessee Company was familiar 
with steel plants and steel making. 

Great credit is due the former captains of the Tennessee Coal 
Company, Nat Baxter, Jr., and his associates for inaugurating 
the steel making operations at Ensley. They had satisfied them- 
selves that the materials in the Birmingham District were suit- 
able, and they believed that the steel industry would eventually 
be the most important business of this section. They were bold 
enough to ask for and persistent enough to secure the money 
to enter upon a most expensive plant installation in a territory 
where steel making had never been given a really practical trial. 
They employed one of the most prominent engineering con- 
cerns in the United States. The improvements in steel mak- 
ing, the machinery, the devices and inventions of the last ten 
years were then unknown. The experience gained in working 
the local raw materials into steel products in the original plant 
has proved of aid to subsequent managements. Just how much 
aid is a question that cannot be answered. Nor can it be esti- 
mated what might have been done by both managements previous 
to the abandonment of the old steel plant, had they been sup- 
plied with sufficient funds for improvements, or just how many 
years behind the times Birmingham would have been in 1909, if 
steel making in this district had not been started when it was. 
Each management has had its part in the progress of the steel 
industry of Alabama. Don Bacon brought up the mining end 
of the company to an exceedingly high standard and, as just 



THE TRIUMPH OF THE T. C. I. 



509 



mentioned, made such improvements as lie could in the manu- 
facturing end. 

Early in 1906, however, the Tennessee Coal Company manage- 
ment again changed. Majority stock in the company was 
acquired by a new syndicate comprising some of the strong 
financial men of the country, among them Leonard C. Hanna, 
Grant B. Schley, Earl W. Ogleby, John W. Gates, James B. 
Duke and others. At the same time majority interest was also 
acquired by these men in the Alabama properties of the Eepublic 
Iron and Steel Company, and the control of both companies 
was thereupon assumed by the one management. 

" It was realized that the time had now come in the history 
of the development of the Tennessee properties," said General 
Eufus N. Ehodes, editor of the Birmingham News, "when an 
expert in the manufacture of steel was a necessity at the head 
of the company. Mr. Bacon was an expert in mining and an 
able man of affairs. He was not a steel expert however. Ac- 
cordingly, he tendered his resignation as president." 

John A. Topping, one of the leading iron and steel men of the 
middle West, was appointed chairman of the executive committee 
of the Tennessee Company, — a position comprising all the 
activities of president, — and he succeeded Mr. Bacon in the 
control of the company in March, 1906. Mr. Topping had also 
been elected president of the Republic Iron and Steel Company 
in January of this same year. He now entered the Southern 
field for the first time. Like Don H. Bacon, he had seen ap- 
proximately thirty years' service in the business, and had long 
occupied high administrative and executive offices. His Alabama 
assignment, as compared to his achievements in northern fields 
of Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia, was merely a sally 
into the field, and directed somewhat at long range. So definitely 
planned, so well ordered and aggressively executed was it, how- 
ever that, short as the time was, — comprehending less than 
a two years 5 campaign on Tennessee Company ground, — there 
was built up a thoroughly harmonious and competent organiza- 
tion. More than seven million dollars were expended for new 
factory extensions and the rehabilitation of the old manufactur- 
ing properties, the work of improvement going on without inter- 
ruption to the mines, mills, or furnaces. In fact, even during 
this reconstruction period records in production and earnings 
were secured and dividends were paid. 



510 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



Although the Tennessee Company was but a unit in the sum 
of properties under Mr. Topping's eye, he was none the less pro- 
foundly interested in its every detail. Conservative, reserved, a 
man of real culture, good sense, and diplomacy, Mr. Topping is 
in the personal way, as in the mental, fine and clean cut, essen- 
tially the officer and the gentleman. So military in his aspect 
and methods as to give a decided hint of the West Pointer, 
he is philosophic as well as practical. He set afoot with ample 
funds to back his plans, fresh impulses of endeavor, new organi- 
zation, and new business methods of development and expansion 
in the Birmingham District. He headed a certain reinforcement, 
greatly needed at the time, to buttress the Tennessee Company. 

John A. Topping is of excellent American stock. For genera- 
tions his folk, like T. H. Aldrich's, have been prominent in finan- 
cial, industrial, and professional life. The family is well known 
in the State of Ohio. James Tallman, one of John Topping's 
ancestors, was an iron manufacturer in Colonial days and was 
given a grant of land in Ohio for services during the Revolution. 
Mr. Topping's father, Henry Topping, a civil engineer, served 
during the Civil War on General Rosencrans' staff, and in 1866 
he settled in Kansas City, Missouri, where he practiced law. 
It was here that his son, John A. Topping, although born at 
St. Clairsville, Ohio, June 10, 1860, was reared and educated. 
Upon his graduation from the public schools of Kansas City at 
an early age, young Topping returned to Ohio, and in 1876 
he started on his business career as a clerk in the First National 
Bank at Bellaire, a house established by his uncle, A. P. Tallman. 
The following year, however, he quit banking for the iron busi- 
ness. He went into the old iEtna Iron and Nail Works, a con- 
cern also founded by the Tallmans, at Bridgeport, and began at 
the foot of the ladder and worked twenty-three years with this 
one company. Through every department of the business he 
passed to the final rank of president, which office he held at the 
time of the consolidation, in 1900, of the National Steel Com- 
pany, the American Sheet Steel Company, the American Tin 
Plate Company, and the American Steel Hoop Company. 
These companies were all later merged with others into the 
United States Steel Corporation. 

When the American Sheet Steel Company was formed in the 
spring of 1900 Mr. Topping was elected first vice-president of 
the company. In the fall of 1903 he accepted the presidency of 



THE TRIUMPH OF THE T. C. I. 



511 



the La Belle Iron Works, one of the largest of the independent 
companies of the middle West. In the spring of 1904 the Ameri- 
can Tin Plate Company and the American Sheet Steel Company 
were consolidated, and in July, 1904, Mr. Topping was elected 
president of the new corporation, — the American Sheet and Tin 
Plate Company. This position he held until 1906, when he 
became identified with the Republic Iron and Steel Company 
and the Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company. 

" The main thing we 're driving for right now in the South," 
he observed, some months after he started the reconstruction of 
the Tennessee Coal Company plants, "is to get good men, 
skilled labor. To do that, of course, we have first to present 
such advantages as will attract the higher order of workingmen. 
That means we have got to regard the esthetic and the human 
side a trifle more. It's business to be human — apart from a 
few other reasons. And living conditions at our mines and plants 
must be improved, and new tenements and schools built. It is a 
gradual business. We 've planned a good deal ahead, for we 're in 
for development work on a big scale. And it will take money 
and time, and, above all, a good man on the ground at the lead. 
~No matter how brilliant a technical or mechanical genius a fellow 
is, nor how extraordinary his degree of culture and mental ability, 
if he has n't got just plain, ordinary common sense and a level 
head he can't make good. The right man must be gotten for 
the right place." 

Mr. Topping presented for the consideration of the board of 
directors the name of Frank Hearne Crockard, as "the right 
man for the place." And in July, 1906, Mr. Crockard was 
elected a member of the executive board with title of vice-president 
and general manager of the Tennessee Company and manager of 
the Southern District of the Republic Iron and Steel Company. 
Among his colleagues, besides Mr. Topping, were T. W. Guthrie, 
assistant to the chairman, W. A. Green, secretary and treasurer, 
and L. T. Beecher, secretary of the executive committee. This 
board also controlled the Republic Company, although the prop- 
erties of the two companies were in no sense merged despite the 
subsequent popular term, " The Tennessee Republic Company." 

Young Crockard found himself on an Herculean venture. He 
was without a doubt the youngest man ever to step on the Ala- 
bama field in so high an official and executive capacity; for 
he is just a little over thirty. He came to the South with nothing 



512 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



in mind but the business before him, — to make the greatest 
steel plant of the world — and he forged ahead with the spirit, 
"its empire building and we've just begun!" A bent for 
machinery was born in him, it seems, and his training simply 
strengthened this tendency. The only son of an iron man, 
William Crockard, furnace superintendent of Riverside iron 
works, Frank Hearne Crockard was born October 29, 1873, at 
Wheeling, West Virginia, the home town of the Woodward 
brothers, who have been associated with the industrial develop- 
ment of the Birmingham District since the early eighties. He 
was named for his father's long-time friend and former busi- 
ness associate, Colonel Frank J. Hearne, who, up to the time 
of his death in 1907, was the great captain of the Colorado Fuel 
and Iron forces. Reared in and about Riverside, young Crockard 
early got breath of the iron business. At Linsly Institute he 
qualified for Lehigh University and completed his engineering 
studies there and at the Michigan College of Mines. Then return- 
ing to Wheeling, he buckled down to the practical end of the iron 
and steel business, enlisting in the ranks, as it were. He started 
in as a foreman at two dollars per day at the Benwood furnace of 
the Riverside Iron Works, — which plant, by the way, later formed 
an important part of the National Tube Company. He worked as 
hard as the next man and no more dreamed that in little over 
ten years he was to become general manager of the greatest 
coal and iron company of the South and creator of a steel mill 
destined to revolutionize industrial conditions of the South, than 
he thought he should become president of the United States. 
It was in these early days that Crockard came to know the men 
and know the work, and also came to have that intimacy and fellow 
feeling for machinery which is one of his most pronounced char- 
acteristics. In fact, he has an actual human liking for the huge 
Allis horizontal cross-compound blowing engine out at the Ensley 
plant to-day. 

After a term of one year's service as foreman, Crockard was 
assigned to resurrect a dead plant, the Jefferson Iron Works at 
Steubenville, Ohio. It had been shut down and was in the 
hands of a receiver. The Riverside Iron Works fathered the 
essay to raise it. The young college-bred foreman had the old 
plant on a paying basis in less than six months and by the year's 
close a neat profit was realized. This occasioned his transfer 
back to Riverside with promotion to blast furnace superintendent 




On the Crest of Ked Mountain 



THE TRIUMPH OF THE T. C. I. 



513 



there. He then became assistant manager of the Eiverside Works, 
the plant being by that time the second largest steel pipe mill 
in the United States. One of the young managers associates 
says : " Frank Crockard's aim all along was simply to try to be 
the best man on his job and to get good results at the least 
possible expense to his company. And he succeeded in this by 
steady, systematic, intelligent work and close attention to de- 
tails. He reorganized and remodeled his entire department. 
Every practice and improvement, invention or adaptation that 
he introduced at Riverside, and every argument that he advanced 
was backed up in dollars and cents for his company. His record 
speaks for itself." 

It was this record that drew Mr. Topping's attention to the 
young department manager, and on the strength of this record 
came his appointment to captain of the Tennessee Company. 

To Mr. Crockard was now given general command of both 
divisions of the two great companies, together with direction of 
the lines of policy maintaining each; a bigger job than had ever 
before loomed up on this young man's horizon. The operating 
division and the commercial division of the Tennessee Company 
were now reorganized. The operating division included five 
distinct departments — ore mines and quarries under Edwin 
Ball ; coal mines and coke ovens under Edward H. Coxe ; blast 
furnaces under George L. Collard; rolling mills under William 
Wuthenow, and the big Ensley division, comprehending steel 
works, iron and steel foundries, and blast furnaces under C. J. 
Barr and E. J. Best. The commercial division, including the 
accounting, order, and credit departments, comprised seven de- 
partments — the treasury department, officered by W. A. Green; 
T. M. Nesbit, and H. Dewart. The sales department, under the 
direction of F. A. Burr, Willard Wilson, J. W. Whatley ; purchas- 
ing department, W. A. Major, purchasing agent; merchandise 
department, B. F. Tyler, manager; traffic department, H. R. 
Moore, traffic manager, W. H. Johnston, assistant traffic man- 
ager; land department, W. B. Allen, manager. Precisely this 
same organization pertained also to the Republic Company. 

As it has been said the manufacturing end of the Tennessee 
Company — the Ensley division — was its weak point. Where 
it was ordained to be main prop and feeder of the rest, it con- 
sumed, instead, all the company's substance. It was too, the 
center of the company's activities the pivot upon which its future 

33 



514 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



operation and fortunes turned. This became, therefore, the first 
work upon which Mr. Crockard concentrated his forces. 

The plant is located on the outskirts of the Warrior coal field, 
just about seven miles due west from Birmingham. It covers a 
hundred-acre stretch of high ground overtopping Enoch Ensley's 
town, and leading off on its western rise into scattered groups 
of negroes' cabins, blackjacks, piney woods, and mining camps. 

The general lay of the land, from northeast to southwest, 
follows the range of Red Mountain and the valleys. The plant 
stands practically between two of the Pratt coal mines — slope 
No. 3 which opens into its extreme northeastern end near the 
blast furnace brood, and slope No. 4 which runs against the 
Open Hearth plant at the southwestern limit. Batteries of coke 
ovens line its western edge. Its raw materials, its flux, and red 
and brown ore are carried to it direct from the mines by way of 
the company's railroad, the Birmingham Southern. This line, 
originally constructed as has been related by Aldrich and DeBar- 
deleben, connects Ensley with the main stems of all the railroads 
now entering Birmingham. Thus the property, while not equal 
to Bessemer in point of space or proximity to ores, has yet 
advantageous points and facilities. 

Having taken the survey of the Tennessee Coal Company 
properties the young steel expert recommended the complete re- 
construction of the entire Ensley division. His plan comprised 
not only the building of a new open hearth steel plant, but also 
a new rail mill, new skip-filled blast furnaces, ore bins, a boiler 
plant, lime plant, and new railroad construction as well as 
additional coal and iron mines. Mr. Crockard then set to work 
on his figures, submitted costs and estimated profits. It was not, 
as popular idea has it, that the young man " had but to touch an 
electric button, and streams of corporation millions would flow 
to his hand." His own figures must first speak. His conceptions 
in whole and in detail, original, strong-molded, clear-cut and 
definite, marked with the introduction of many economies and 
the promise of big profit, made a satisfactory presentation. The 
funds were voted and Mr. Crockard was given free rein. Under 
his leadership work was at once begun on the largest scheme of 
iron and steel development ever up to that time undertaken in 
the South. 

One feature alone of this great reconstruction scheme — the 
conception, designing, and building of a steel plant compre- 



Frank Hearne Crockard 
Vice-President and General Manager of Tennessee Coal, Iron 
and Railroad Company 



THE TRIUMPH OF THE T. C. I. 515 

hending the duplex process — required in itself more varieties of 
skill and expert knowledge than all other branches of the iron 
business combined. 

The big work was done in record breaking time. The new 
plant was constructed with a view to permanence, economy, com- 
fort, and safety along every line. A heavier steel construction 
than that employed in great bridges and skyscrapers was used. 

This in itself, while calling for immense capital, is, of course, 
an economy in the long run, for it ensures against shut down 
through breakage of machinery, and gives the work its solid and 
substantial character. Apart from this durable and impressive 
structure, the light, the wide spaces, and the convenient and 
logical arrangement of each detail and every machine, giant 
and dwarf, strikes upon the spirit of the technical man a 
peculiar sense of gratification. It is, in a word, the accomplish- 
ment of a certain ideal of the modern manufacturing standards, 
and has attracted the attention of the entire steel world at home 
and abroad. In itself it has established a precedent, and in con- 
nection with the associated Bessemer plant it has made a record 
for tonnage which has not been equalled in this country or abroad 
at any plant operating a similar number of furnaces. An order 
that riveted the attention of the entire steel world on the new 
Ensley plant was that of the late E. H. Harriman for steel rails 
for all the Harriman roads in 1907 and 1908. 

Under the Topping- Crockard administration the Tennessee 
Company thus kept well in the lead. The idea of the new manage- 
ment was, first and last, as Mr. Topping declared, legitimate 
development work, " on a big scale." An agreement looking 
towards this end had been privately made between the business 
men comprising the syndicate that held a majority of the stock, 
this agreement being not to sell even one share of that stock for 
a period of two years. Sixteen men comprised the syndicate 
as follows: 0. H. Payne, L. C. Hanna, G. B. Schley, J. P. 
Duke, E. J. Berwynd, J. W. Gates, A. N. Brady, G. A. Gessler, 
Oakleigh Thorne (who held ten thousand three hundred shares 
each) ; E. W. Ogleby, H. S. Black, F. D. Stout, J. W. Simpson 
(who held five thousand one hundred and fifty shares each) ; 
G. W. French (two thousand five hundred shares) ; S. G. 
Cooper (one thousand five hundred shares), and John A. Top- 
ping (one thousand shares). When they purchased their shares 
in the fall of 1905, there was outstanding common stock valued 



516 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



at twenty-two million five hundred and fifty-three thousand 
dollars ($22,553,000) and preferred stock to the amount of 
two hundred and forty-eight thousand three hundred dollars 
($248,300). Thus the syndicate held one hundred and eighteen 
thousand five hundred shares, which was more than half the 
total. One half of the stock was paid for by the individuals and 
withdrawn, and one half was borrowed upon by the holders. 
As has been stated, about seven million dollars was then ex- 
pended during the ensuing two years of the Topping- Crockard 
administration, in improvements, and early in 1907 new stock 
was issued. The banking firm of Moore and Schley, acting as 
agent for the syndicate, borrowed a large share of this money 
for themselves and the men comprising the syndicate. By the 
late fall of 1907 the firm had outstanding between five and six 
million dollars, which, added to their other outstanding loans 
made a total of thirty-three million dollars. Within forty-eight 
hours more than six million dollars was called for. As a matter 
of course, the huge demands could not be met on the instant. 
All told, one hundred thousand shares of Tennessee Coal, 
Iron, and Railroad Company stock in loans had been placed 
by the firm with other banks. When the panic struck the 
country in full force, this stock was neither bought nor sold 
owing to the fact that so much of it was out of the market. 
As conditions grew worse the banks refused to loan upon a 
security where the market was to all appearances perfectly 
normal. Nearly all these banks called on Moore and Schley to 
take the Tennessee out of their loan. The firm asked the 
members of the Tennessee Company syndicate for assistance, 
but it was not forthcoming. The credit of the firm was totter- 
ing. Grant B. Schley then called on the New York attorney, 
Lewis Cass Ledyard, who is a friend of John Pierpont Morgan, 
and the matter of the merger of the Tennessee Company and 
the United Steel Corporation was discussed as the sole means 
of saving the Moore and Schley people from shipwreck. It was 
decided to submit the proposition to Mr. Morgan with the sug- 
gestion that the steel corporation buy the Tennessee stock on 
the basis of par and cash. One conference followed another and 
excitement grew intense. 

On the night of November. 2, matters came to a head. Mr. 
Morgan invited the men concerned to a special conference at 
his library. The greatest secrecy was maintained and no one 



THE TRIUMPH OF THE T. C. I. 517 



excepting the financiers interested was present. These men, 
besides Mr. Morgan, were Thomas F. Eyan, Eichard Trimble, 
secretary of the steel corporation, Grant B. Schley of the firm of 
Moore and Schley, George W. Perkins and Charles Steel of 
Morgan and Company, George F. Baker of the First National 
Bank, Henry C. Frick, the steel magnate, former Judge E. H. 
Gary, chairman of the board of the United States Steel Corpora- 
tion, Lewis Cass Ledyard, William Solomon, and Isaac N". 
Seligman. 

The session lasted until sometime after midnight. The 
Tennessee Company's affairs and those of the Moore and Schley 
firm were discussed in detail. Mr. Morgan did not consider 
that any particular benefit would come to the Steel Corpora- 
tion by acquiring so much as a dollar's worth of T. C. I. Com- 
pany's stock. The main concern of the majority of the financiers 
present was to keep the Moore and Schley firm, in which they were 
all more or less interested, from going under. The fall of Moore 
and Schley would have also meant the collapse of dozens of other 
concerns, and general demoralization on Wall Street. One point 
raised was the uncertainty of the Government's attitude towards 
the Tennessee Company's merger, in case the merger should 
be decided upon, whereat it was at once proposed that J udge Gary 
and Mr. Frick go down to Washington on the next train and 
talk over the situation with President Eoosevelt. If this point 
were cleared, Mr. Morgan would regard the merger with favor. 

President Eoosevelf s statements referring to this matter have 
been widely published, although very few of the details of the 
great trade are known. Mr. Eoosevelt wrote to Honorable 
Charles T. Bonaparte, attorney general, the following letter in 
regard to the situation: 

The White House, Washington, November 4, 1907. 

My dear Attorney General, — Judge E. H. Gary and Mr. 
H. C. Frick, on behalf of the steel corporation, have just called 
upon me. They state that there is a certain business firm (the 
name of which I have not been told, but which is of real im- 
portance in ISTew York business circles) which will undoubtedly 
fail this week if help is not given. Among its assets are a 
majority of the securities of the Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Eail- 
road Company. Applications have been urgently made to the 
Steel corporation to purchase this stock, as the only means of 
avoiding a failure. 

Judge Gary and Mr. Frick informed me that as a mere busi- 
ness transaction they do not care to purchase the stock; that 



518 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



under ordinary circumstances they would not consider purchas- 
ing the stock, because but little benefit will come to the steel 
corporation from the purchase; that they are aware that the 
purchase will be used as a handle for attack upon them, on the 
ground that they are striving to secure a monopoly of the busi- 
ness and prevent competition — not that this would represent 
what could honestly be said, but what might recklessly and un- 
truthfully be said. 

They inform me that, as a matter of fact, the policy of the 
company has been to decline to acquire more than sixty per cent 
of the steel properties, and that this purpose has been persevered 
in for several years past, with the object of preventing these 
accusations, and, as a matter of fact, their proportion of steel 
properties has slightly decreased, so that it is below this sixty 
per cent, and the acquisition of the property in question will not 
raise it above sixty per cent. 

But they feel that it is immensely to their interests, as to 
the interest of every responsible business man, to try to prevent 
a panic and general industrial smash-up at this time, and that 
they are willing to go into this transaction, which they would 
not otherwise go into, because it seems the opinion of those best 
fitted to express judgment in New York, that it will be an im- 
portant factor in preventing a break that might be ruinous, and 
that this has been urged upon them by the combination of the 
most responsible bankers in New York, who are now thus en- 
gaged in endeavoring to save the situation. But they asserted 
they did not wish to do this if I stated that it ought not to be 
done. I answered that while, of course, I could not advise them 
to take the action proposed, J felt it no public duty of mine to 
interpose any objection. 

Sincerely yours, 

Theodore Roosevelt. 
Honorable Charles J. Bonaparte, Attorney General. 

With the coast now clear, to all appearances, the matter pro- 
ceeded with almost incredible swiftness. Judge Gary and Mr. 
Frick returned to New York late on the night of November 4. 
Again besieged by an army of reporters, Judge Gary refused to 
discuss his mission beyond saying : " The President is disposed 
to do everything in his power that is right and proper to benefit 
the interests of the country." 

Early the following morning, the officers of the United States 
Steel Corporation, the bankers and trust company presidents again 
met for an all day conference at the residence of John Pier- 
pont Morgan, and the trade was made. That very evening 
Judge Gary gave out for publication the following statement 
in regard to the steel transaction: 



THE TRIUMPH OF THE T. C. I. 



519 



" The United States Steel corporation has been negotiating 
for a majority of the stock of the Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Rail- 
road Company at par. The company will also offer the same terms 
to the remainder of the stockholders who make tender of stock 
in fifteen days. The finance committee of the United States Steel 
corporation has closed a contract, subject to the formal approval 
of the board of directors, who meet to-morrow at four o'clock in 
the afternoon. Acquisition of this property will increase our 
percentage of the total steel produced in this country about two 
and a half per cent, making our percentage of the total steel pro- 
duced in this country about sixty per cent." 

The steel corporation paid for the Tennessee Company property 
chiefly with five per cent bonds of its own issue. The actual 
figures were $34,684,977.64, par value of bonds, and $632,655 
cash, making the total purchase price $35,317,632.64. In re- 
turn the steel corporation received about all of the Tennessee 
Company's stock, having a par value of $30,374,825. The ex- 
change was at the rate of $119 of steel bonds for every $100 
share of Tennessee stock. 

As a matter of fact, the Tennessee property ranks first in the 
United States in point of area controlled, and second in point 
of quantity of undeveloped coal and iron ore. The estimate in 
the fall of 1907 was that, " the Tennessee Company owned from 
500,000,000 to 700,000,000 tons of iron ore, 1,500,000,000 tons 
of coal, a large amount of fluxing material, and large quantities 
of all the other elements needed for the manufacture of steel." 

As may be surmised the news of the great deal burst like 
a sudden sunbreak upon Alabama, struggling, as it was, to 
hold its own in the face of the gathering clouds. A whole 
world of enterprises apart from coal and iron interests was in- 
fluenced by the stupendous merger. The Birmingham Age- 
Herald, November 6, discussed the situation as follows : 

"The sale of the Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad Com- 
pany to the United States Steel corporation continued to be the 
chief topic in local industrial and financial circles yesterday. 
The deal is regarded here with high favor, since the general 
policy of the steel corporation is known to mean development on 
large lines, and since, too, it is known to be the only industrial 
institution strong enough to put up cost and push improvements 
in spite of adverse financial conditions. 

" It is thought that but for the money panic in New York the 
interests which acquired the Tennessee properties two years ago 
would have retained their holdings indefinitely. The men who 



520 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



formed the syndicate felt satisfied that they had a good thing, 
and it was seen that their purpose was to develop the properties 
in a steady and business-like way. But the money squeeze came, 
and under the circumstances it was found best for all concerned 
to let the great steel corporation take over the properties. 

" The steel corporation is made up of a large number of sub- 
sidiary companies, operating innumerable large plants. Among 
the chief subsidiary concerns are the Carnegie Company, the 
Federal Steel Company, under which the Illinois Steel is oper- 
ated, the American Steel and Wire, the National Tube, the 
American Steel Hoop, the American Sheet Steel, and the Ameri- 
can Bridge Company. 

" The Tennessee Company, with its enlarged open-hearth rail 
mill and six blast furnaces at Ensley, and ten stacks outside of 
Ensley, and with its immense coal and ore properties, will come 
to be one of its most important subsidiary companies. Like the 
other subsidiary concerns it will retain a complete executive and 
operating organization. 

" The steel corporation being a large exporter it will have a 
great advantage in shipping its products from the Birmingham 
District because of the cheap ocean rates at Pensacola and Mobile 
as compared with rates from eastern ports. In pointing out this 
advantage men prominent in the metal trade here say that the 
United States steel will naturally push development in the dis- 
trict, and will, as soon as possible, start new construction, — steel 
plants and plants for turning out various finished products. The 
immense trade the steel corporation will have with Panama will 
be an additional reason, it is said, why the steel corporation must 
hurry along development. Taken all together, the new owners 
of the Tennessee Company will, it is thought, make the Birming- 
ham District hum as it never hummed before. They have enor- 
mous capital and will expend many millions here every year." 



The Birmingham News said editorially: 

" The taking over of the stock or properties of the Tennessee 
Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company by the United States Steel 
Corporation is a subject discussed this morning in industrial and 
financial circles to the exclusion of every other. Local industrial 
captains very confidently assert that the change of ownership 
will prove of vast advantage to the Birmingham District. 

" One gentleman, an authority in manufacturing and banking 
circles, this morning said that in his judgment ' twenty-five per 
cent was added to the value of all property in the Birmingham 
District by the simple announcement that the United States 
Steel Corporation had become the owner of the properties of the 
Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company.' Others were just 
as confident that it was ' a real good thing.' 

"About ten days ago, when the money flurry in New York 



THE TRIUMPH OF THE TV C. I. 521 



was at its height, one of the New York dailies contained a 
statement that the United States Steel Corporation had offered to 
lend the associated banks of New York, in one lump, $50,000,000 
in cash. The purchase yesterday, or the day before, of the Ten- 
nessee Coal, Iron, and Eailroad Company by it would indicate 
that it has a large amount of money ready for use, the sum in- 
volved in the purchase of the Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Eailroad 
Company being reported as about seventeen millions of dollars 
in cash. It would appear, therefore, that the United States Steel 
Corporation has plenty of money, and money mixed with ex- 
perience is all that the Birmingham District needs for fullest 
development. A prominent man of affairs this morning said 
that in his judgment the advent of the steel corporation into the 
Birmingham District made a city in this valley of 300,000 people 
in two years very probable. 

" It is a well-known fact that the steel made at Ensley is in 
many respects the best in the world. The United States Steel 
Corporation practically controls the steel trade of the United 
States. With enlarged and improved plants it can make steel 
in this district cheaper than anywhere else. Superiority of 
product and cheapness of manufacture will conspire soon to 
make the Birmingham District the largest steel manufacturing 
center in the universe." 

Richard H. Edmonds, editor of the Manufacturers' Record, 
in discussing the significant purchase wrote as follows : 

" About ten years ago the late Abram S. Hewitt, universally 
recognized as one of the world's greatest metallurgists, gave me 
for publication an interview, in which he said that Alabama 
would ' within twenty-five years from that time dominate the 
basic steel industry of the world, just as Pittsburg and the lake 
region dominated the Bessemer steel industry.' All experts 
familiar with the vast supplies of ore in Alabama and their 
proximity to coal have recognized that this situation, as clearly 
seen by Mr. Hewitt, is one of the greatest assets of America, and 
that in the general rounding out of American development there 
would come a time when these resources could be utilized on 
such a large scale as to bring about a fulfillment of Mr. Hewitt's 
prophecy. 

u I take it that the long-headed people who have managed the 
steel corporation have recognized this strategic importance of 
the Alabama field just as fully as Mr. Hewitt, Mr. Carnegie, and 
others have done in the past ; for, like Mr. Hewitt, Mr. Carnegie 
once wrote me to the effect that he looked to Alabama as the 
chief competitor in the iron trade with Pennsylvania. But the 
conditions of their own operations necessarily caused the man- 
agers of the United States Steel Corporation to concentrate all 
of their energies upon the rounding out and completion of the 



522 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



vast plans for the fullest development of their Pennsylvania and 
Lake Superior interests. The carrying out of these plans has 
been on a scale of such magnitude as to fully tax the activities 
of the men who have been leaders of the vast steel interests of 
that corporation. Moreover, the people who three years ago 
secured control of the Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad Com- 
pany had a full realization of the great extent and future value 
of these properties, and it is quite certain that but for the pres- 
ent financial situation they would not have parted with the con- 
trol of that property for even three or four times what present 
necessities have compelled them to accept. However much it 
is regretted that the men who owned the Tennessee, and who 
knew its almost immeasurable possibilities, have been compelled 
to part with it, the steel corporation is the chief beneficiary of 
the deal. 

" When the steel corporation was organized it claimed owner- 
ship of about 700,000,000 tons of iron ore. This has since been 
increased by securing the Hill properties, but it has been fully 
demonstrated that the Tennessee owns not less than 700,000,000 
tons of ore, or as much as the steel corporation owned when it 
was first organized, and at least 200,000,000 tons more than the 
highest estimate put upon the amount owned by the Hill in- 
terests. In addition to this the Tennessee Company owns far 
more coal than the steel corporation has even owned before, es- 
timated at 2,000,000,000 tons. If the Tennessee Company did 
not have a single furnace or a single mine, its properties would be 
worth far more than the cost to the steel corporation. The fact 
is, while the steel corporation has estimated its iron ores in the 
ground as worth $1 a ton, it would have to put an estimate of 
only 5 cents a ton on the ore in the ground in Alabama and 
count its cost at only 5 cents a ton to make a total valuation of 
$135,000,000, or more than four times the cost of the property 
to the corporation. The increasing scarcity of iron ores through- 
out the world makes a valuation of $1 a ton really a very low 
price to put on ores in the ground. 

" Some months ago I received a letter from J. Stephens Jeans, 
secretary of the British Iron Trade Association, one of the 
world's greatest iron authorities, in which, referring to the in- 
creasing scarcity of ores compared with the world's increasing 
demand, he said that iron ores were becoming of such priceless 
value it was quite possible that in the near future no country 
would permit their exportation, and that if the steel corporation 
was now being formed, it would be justified in putting a much 
higher capitalization than $700,000,000 on its 700,000,000 tons 
of ore. In other words, that they would be justified in really 
estimating the value of their ores in the ground more nearly at 
$2 a ton than at $1. It has been estimated that the supply of 
valuable ore in the Lake Superior District is about 1,500,000,000 
tons, owned by the steel corporation and independent companies, 



THE TRIUMPH OF THE T. C. I. 



523 



although some experts have put the estimate as high as 1,750,- 
000,000 tons. As the Lake Superior District is now mining 
over 40,000,000 tons a year, the total known quantity in all that 
region, even at the present rate of production, would last only 
fifty years, even if it should prove that there are 2,000,000,000 
tons yet unmined. But as iron production doubles every ten 
years, the Lake Superior District will be drawn upon for not 
less than 2,000,000,000 tons within the next thirty or forty years. 
This would entirely exhaust the total known supply of all that 
region to-day. It is, therefore, a matter of profound importance 
to the steel corporation, and really to the future of the whole 
steel industry, that it has been able to secure such a great ore 
property in Alabama. With the 700,000,000 tons of ore to which 
in the course of events it has now fallen heir through its purchase 
of the Tennessee Company, its own future is made safer and 
sounder than ever before. 

"So important is the Alabama region and so strategic is the 
situation that it is practically certain that economic develop- 
ment and the safety of its operations for the future would have 
compelled the steel corporation to enter the Alabama District 
even if it had to do so at a cost of four to five times as great 
as it has now paid for the Tennessee Company. I believe that 
no one familiar with the whole history of the iron and steel 
industry of the United States can question the fact that the 
purchase of the Alabama properties is vastly more important 
to the steel corporation than was the purchase of the Hill ore 
lands, and that the price at which the former were secured is 
so triflingly small as compared with inherent values that this 
is the most important deal made by the corporation since it 
was first organized. It seems a great pity, and yet it is one 
of those conditions that cannot be helped, that the owners of 
the Tennessee Company, just when they had commenced to 
reap the fruition of their outlay for improvements, have had 
to yield up this rich prize. 

" The whole metallurgical world is now turning to basic steel. 
The Tennessee Company has been making for the last two years 
what is accepted by railroads as the best steel rails in the United 
States, and some months ago E. H. Harriman placed an order 
for 150,000 tons of rails for the Union Pacific and the Southern 
Pacific in preference to the steel corporation by reason of his 
desire to secure basic rails. In order to meet the demand for 
basic rails in preference to Bessemer, the great $75,000,000 
plant of the steel corporation at Gary, Indiana, is being built for 
the production of basic iron and steel instead of Bessemer. 
Until the Gary plant is completed the steel corporation would 
not have been able to provide basic rails to meet the demands of 
the railroads ; but by the purchase of the Tennessee Company it 
immediately gets into the market with the control of the only 
basic rail plant in the country, except that recently built by 



524 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



Schwab at Bethlehem. This move on the part of the steel cor- 
poration is of world-wide influence and importance. It marks a 
new epoch in the steel industry of America as emphatic as that 
which was inaugurated by the organization of the steel company 
itself. As Alabama is destined to fulfill Mr. Hewitt's predic- 
tion of dominating the basic steel industry of the world, it was 
essential for the best interests of the steel corporation that it 
should get into that field at the first possible opportunity, and 
it has utilized the present situation to do so at a price which adds 
enormously to its own strength/' 

This new situation of the Tennessee Company, with its 
stupendous reinforcement of capital and influence, involved 
naturally problems of a more complex and extensive character 
than had ever before confronted it. It called for a captain initi- 
ated in steel corporation psychics and practices, one who had, 
so to speak, a bird's-eye view of the whole iron and steel world, 
and the grip on essentials. Casting about, therefore, the steel 
corporation officials hit upon an utterly unexpected man, — 
one George Gordon Crawford. The first intimation of this 
appointment received in Birmingham was an Associated Press 
despatch. Then followed a story in the New York Herald, 
November 21, 1907, making the following statement: 

" George G. Crawford has been selected by the steel corpora- 
tion to work out the problem of the Tennessee Coal, Iron, and 
Railroad Company. He was elected president of that company 
yesterday to succeed John A. Topping, whose office as chairman 
of the board was abolished at the meeting. Mr. Crawford is one 
of the group of young men who are the hustling heads of the 
subsidiary companies of the steel corporation. He has been 
manager of the big McKeesport plants of the National Tube 
Company. . . . Mr. Crawford will leave immediately for Bir- 
mingham to take up the duties of the office. He will make that 
city his headquarters, and the steel corporation heads have let 
it become known that Mr. Crawford's headquarters will be at 
Birmingham." 

The decided flavor of public interest, even curiosity, in the 
new appointment was a trifle odd as those things generally go, 
for Birmingham folk had become as used to administration 
changes in the Tennessee Company as to the revolving seasons. 
But this time with the giant armored figure, the United States 
Steel Corporation, in the background, and owing to the fact that 
this assignment was bruited a permanency, expectancy stood 
on tiptoe. 



THE TRIUMPH OF THE T. C. I. 



525 



The new president is a Southern man, a Georgian, as were 
Frank Gilmer, builder of the old South and North, John T. Mil- 
ner, the founder of Birmingham, and various other men concerned 
in these records at an earlier period. Gordon Crawford was 
born on a cotton plantation near Madison, in Morgan County, 
August 24, 1869. His father was Dr. George G. Crawford of 
Atlanta, and his mother, Margaret Eeed Howard of Savannah. 
He was graduated in mechanical engineering from the Georgia 
School of Technology in the class of 1890. He then went abroad 
to take a course in chemistry at the Karl Eberhard University 
at Tubingen. He had his own notions and wanted to avoid 
the institutions frequented by English and Americans, so he 
stepped over Heidelberg and the rest, and planted foot in 
that lonely little student town shaped centuries ago by the mailed 
hand of the first duke of Wiirtemburg. The little seat of scholar- 
ship, deep hid in the circle of the Black Forest, is German to its 
marrow. " Tubingen was owned from cobblestone to steeple by 
the fellows themselves," said Mr. Crawford; "they came from 
everywhere, excepting, at that time, from the English-speaking 
countries." There were, in fact, but three Americans in the 
whole place, and one of the three was Gordon Crawford. Pipe, 
stein, and "book sometimes," and the couple of years in the 
chemical laboratory whistled by. Then after a run over the 
continent young Gordon Crawford came back to the States to 
settle down to an American grind. Being now nearly twenty-three 
years old, he found he must begin to earn his own salt. Oddly 
enough his initial essay was in the Birmingham District. He 
came, obscure and unheralded, for no one knew him then. He 
entered the service of the Sloss Iron and Steel Company as 
draftsman in 1892, when " Tom " Seddon was president of that 
company. The coal and iron industry of the South was beginning 
to send out signals of distress, for the panic year of '93 was sighted. 
Believing that he could learn the business better and on more 
scientific lines in Pittsburg, Gordon Crawford went there after a 
three months' trial in Birmingham. He did not know a living 
soul in that city either. His only assets were his wits, his good 
health, his technical training, and what his friends call "his 
incorrigible personality." He landed a job with the Carnegie 
Steel Company, after a systematic canvass of the different plants, 
and started in as chemist in the laboratory of the Edgar Thomson 
steel works. The young man buckled down to three years of 



526 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



routine, with the idea of learning every detail of the iron and 
steel business. It is said that he refused promotion over and 
over with fair increase of salary, determined to wait until he 
mastered the details of each of the various departments in which 
he elected to work. After filling all the positions in the 
laboratory except that of chief chemist, Mr. Crawford took a 
reduction in wages to get into the engineering department, 
where he was employed as draftsman, and thus acquired practical 
experience in both chemistry and mechanical engineering, 
which he had studied and which are the two important branches 
of the iron and steel business. This experience was of great value 
to him in all the subsequent executive positions which he has 
held. 

In 1895 he was appointed assistant superintendent of the 
Edgar Thomson furnaces. The following year he left the Car- 
negie Steel Company to be superintendent of the furnaces of the 
National Tube Company at McKeesport, and subsequently the 
steel works comprising the Bessemer department and blooming 
mills were also placed under his charge. He returned to the 
Carnegie Steel Company as superintendent of the Edgar Thom- 
son furnaces, then and now the largest blast furnace plant in 
the world. Very few men who have left the Carnegie Steel Com- 
pany have ever been asked to return to its employ. After two 
years'' service in this position he returned to the National Tube 
Company at McKeesport as manager of the national department, 
which comprised all the works of the National Tube Company, 
including the following: At McKeesport, blast furnaces, con- 
verting and blooming mills, plate and rolling mills, tube and 
pipe mills ; at Riverton, the Boston Iron and Steel Works ; at Ver- 
sailles, the National Galvanizing Works; and on the South side 
of Pittsburg, the Republic Iron Works. The aggregate of 
works employed ten thousand men and was at the time one of 
the three largest plants of the United States Steel Corporation, 
the other two being the Homestead Works of the Carnegie Steel 
Company, and the South Works of the Illinois Steel Company. 
While manager at this point, Mr. Crawford remodeled the en- 
tire department. The old works were torn down and new works 
put in their place without diminishing the quantity of ma- 
terial being manufactured, — a particularly difficult operation. 
About thirteen million dollars was spent in rebuilding the 
works. Mr. Crawford also introduced various original devices 



THE TRIUMPH OF THE T. C. I. 



527 



and labor-saving expedients in this plant. Among his inven- 
tions, for which patent was granted in 1902, was a water-sealed 
valve, an entirely new type of furnace valve and dust catcher, 
operated by water. This is in use to-day in most of the important 
blast furnace plants in the United States. 

While manager of the national department, Mr. Crawford 
served on the following committees of the United States Steel 
Corporation : The coke committee, the wage committee, the blast 
furnace committee, the roll committee, the ingot mold committee, 
and the committee of engineers for the Duluth plant of the Min- 
nesota Steel Company. While serving on these standing com- 
mittees he revisited the old world and kept in touch with the 
iron and steel works and industrial conditions abroad. In 
Germany, especially, he was granted many privileges and op- 
portunities for inspection seldom accorded any American. 

As chief executive of the Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad 
Company, Mr. Crawford has managed the affairs of his company 
since his appointment in 1907 with consummate skill and diplo- 
macy. Exceedingly exacting, sober and systematic in office, he 
is at the same time a thorough disciplinarian and is well in- 
formed, as has been shown, " all along the line." He keeps in 
close touch with each department, but never in any sense inter- 
feres, giving to every department manager free and wide scope, 
and respect and appreciation for skillful, intelligent, and efficient 
service. His suggestions, viewpoints, and directions he states 
quietly, logically, and so simply and clearly there is never any 
mistake as to what he means. He is curiously without idiosyn- 
crasies and he does not expect impossibilities. " It 's simply a 
natural development we are after," he says. " If every month 
returns are a little bit better than the month before, and a steady, 
gradual improvement is shown, I am perfectly satisfied." 

The Crawford administration is the twentieth administration 
of the Tennessee Company. Its full organization comprises the 
following departments and officers: 

Executive Department 

George G. Crawford, President. 

Frank H. Crockard, Vice-President. 

H. C. Ryding, Assistant to Vice-President. 

Treasury Department 

L. T. Beecher, Secretary and Treasurer. 

J. N. Coffin, Assistant Secretary and Assistant Treasurer. 



528 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



Accounting Department 
F. B. Winslow, Auditor. 

Land Department 
W. B. Allen, Manager. 

Sales Department 
F. A. Burr, General Manager of Sales. 
Willard Wilson, Assistant General Manager of Sales. 
J. W. Whatley, Manager of Coal Sales. 

Traffic Department 
A. W. Caret, Traffic Manager. 

Purchasing Department 
W. A. Major, Purchasing Agent. 

Legal Department 
Walker Percy, Counsel. 

Operating Department 

Ore Mines and Quarries 

Edwin Ball, General Manager of Ore Mines. 
C. E. Abbott, Chief Engineer. 

Coal Mines and Coke Ovens 

E. H. Coxe, General Superintendent. 
Robert Hamilton, Chief Engineer. 

Steel Plant and Furnaces, Ensley Works 

C. J. Barr, General Superintendent. 

E. J. Best, Chief Engineer. 

H. M. Urban, Superintendent of Construction. 

Alice, Bessemer, and Oxmoor Furnaces 
E. P. Williams, Superintendent. 

Bessemer Rolling Mills 
P. J. Mundie, Superintendent. 

The organization of the various former administrations has 
been given in preceding chapters. A list of the presidents of 
the celebrated company, beginning with the Sewanee Mining 
Company, parent stock of the Tennessee Company, is as fol- 
lows: Samuel F. Tracy, capitalist, New York City (1852-60) ; 
A. S. Colyar, prominent lawyer and journalist of Tennessee and 




George Gordon Crawford 
President of the Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company 



THE TRIUMPH OF THE T. C. I. 



529 



ex-member of the Confederate Congress (1866-68) ; A. J. Dun- 
can, president of Bank of the Union of Nashville, Tennessee 
(1868-70) ; A. S. Colyar (second term) (1870-72) ; Judge J. 
L. Whitworth, president of the Fourth National Bank of Nash- 
ville, Tennessee (1872-74) ; Colonel Sam Tate, one of the big 
pioneer railroad men of the South; Moses J. Wicks of Mem- 
phis ; Mike Burns, president of the Nashville, Chattanooga, and 
St. Louis Bailroad; L. B. Fite of Nashville; Dr. W. Morrow, 
J. C. Warner of Nashville; Nat Baxter, Jr., of Nashville (1882- 
86); Enoch Ensley of Memphis (1886-87); Nat Baxter, Jr. 
(second term) (1887-89) ; John C. Brown, ex-governor of Ten- 
nessee (1889); T. C. Piatt, United States Senator from New 
York (1889-91) ; Nat Baxter, Jr. (third term) (1891-1901) ; 1 
Don H. Bacon of Minnesota (1901-06) ; John A. Topping of 
Ohio and Frank Hearne Crockard of West Virginia (1906-07) ; 2 
George Gordon Crawford of Georgia (1909~. . . ). 

As thus shown, the bench and bar of Tennessee has been 
strongly represented in the executive department of this company 
in the past. So also have been the Confederate States Army, 
the Confederate Congress, the prominent banks of Tennessee, 
certain railroads of the South, Wall Street, and the United States 
Senate, while from the Birmingham District have come the two 
great pioneer leaders of the coal and iron business. 

Tracing the origins of the great company to its source in the 
mountains of Tennessee and following its evolution stage by 
stage, its history proves, indeed, to be a singularly interesting 
one. Certainly the company has survived tremendous catastro- 
phies, narrow escapes from bankruptcy, legal entanglements, and 
Wall Street manipulations such as have few other mining com- 
panies in the whole United States. At the same time it has set 
afoot more " big doings " and influenced a wider territory of the 
South than has any other company. It is the Birmingham Dis- 
trict's biggest asset, for it is the company around which the 
whole mineral region of the State swings. 

Although, as Mr. Crawford expresses it, " Simply a natural 
development is what we are after," the Tennessee Company has 

1 During this third Baxter administration from 1892-94, the leading 
resident officers of the Tennessee Company in Birmingham were H. F. 
DeBardeleben and T. H. Aldrich. 

2 John A. Topping served as chairman of the executive board of the 
Tennessee Company, a position comprising the activities of president. 
Mr. Crockard was vice-president and general manager, and the resident 
officer in charge. 

34 



530 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



in reality entered npon a great era of expansion nnder his 
management. While strengthening each department of the com- 
pany, and giving the impetus to what may be termed " team 
play " throughout, he has introduced many new features and im- 
provements. Rail manufacture at Ensley has, during his ad- 
ministration, passed the experimental stage in every particular, 
so that now steel rails may be made to any specification and 
with the same uniformity and excellence " as in any other rail 
mill," to quote his own words. 

Apart from retaining and improving all on the ground worth 
retaining, the new president has drawn his own outline for the 
future development of the Tennessee Company properties, and 
made his own studies with a view to diversifying and expanding 
the company's steel product. Finding that every plan and design 
for future development on a genuinely titanic scale came to an 
abrupt halt when confronted by the condition of insufficient 
water for the manufacturing plants, Mr. Crawford's first step in 
laying the cornerstone, as it were, to his great structure, has 
been to provide an adequate water supply. 

This has ever been the one lack of the Birmingham District 
for manufacturing enterprises on a modern scale. From the 
very time old Pratt mines were opened, way back in the seventies, 
the need had been felt. 

The water supply for the Ensley plants of the Tennessee Com- 
pany is drawn from Village Creek, and supplemented during 
the dry season by water from the Birmingham Water Works 
Company. In periods of drouth not a sufficient quantity can be 
obtained to enable the plants to operate at full capacity; nor 
has it been feasible to produce power cheaply on account of lack 
of water for condensing or gas washing. To remedy this seri- 
ous, and indeed rather menacing situation, an exhaustive in- 
vestigation of the most economical source of water supply was 
instituted by Mr. Crawford shortly after his inauguration as 
president, and it has been going on for a year and a half under 
the direction of Morris Knowles of Pittsburg. Mr. Crawford 
says in reference to this matter: 

" This investigation has involved a study of all the feasible 
methods of bringing water cheaply to the vicinity of Ensley. 
Studies of the records of rainfalls and watershed yields have 
been made. Stream gaugings of all the. important streams in 
the vicinity of Birmingham and evaporation tests at the Shades 
Mountain reservoir of the Birmingham Water Works Company 



THE TRIUMPH OF THE T. C. I. 



531 



and at East Lake have been made, and a large amount of valuable 
data has been secured from which the method outlined below 
has been designed. 

" The plan which has finally been adopted is to construct a 
dam across the channel of Village Creek immediately above the 
mouth of Venison Creek, impounding the water of Village Creek 
and its tributaries. A channel will be cut up one of the tribu- 
taries, Camp branch, to a location for the pumping site, shown 
on the accompanying map. This pumping station will have a 
pumping capacity of 25,000,000 gallons per day, and from it 
a 42-inch pipe-line, two and an eighth miles long, will carry 
the water to a reservoir, from which a distributing pipe will 
carry it by gravity to the Ensley works, and to the tracts 
of land which the Tennessee Company has purchased below 
Ensley, the reservoir being about equally distant from both 
places. 

" This scheme furnishes the advantage of maximum usage of 
water with minimum storage, for the reason that the waste 
waters from the Ensley works will flow back into Village Creek, 
and will then pass through the channel in Camp branch to the 
pumping-station again, several months being occupied in the 
travel of the water through the reservoir, which will give it time 
to deposit its sediment and cool. Some of the details regarding 
the project are as follows : 

a Height of the dam, 90 feet. 

"Length of the dam, 490 feet. 

" Length of the lake, five miles. 

" Total impounding capacity of the reservoir, 2,500,000,000 
gallons. 

" The dam will be built of concrete, and the crest of the dam 
will be a driveway connecting the opposite sides of the valley, 
the spillway being spanned by a concrete arch. 

" During the winter and spring the reservoir will fill, and dur- 
ing a normal year a quantity of water practically equivalent to 
the reservoir capacity will flow over the dam; thus the lake will 
be kept fresh. 

" Of the 2,500,000,000 gallons impounded in the reservoir, the 
total usable quantity will be practically 1,700,000,000, leaving a 
considerable depth of reservoir to allow for silting. 

" The shores of the reservoir will be planted with trees and 
protected from the washing spring rains. 

" The dam will be constructed to permit of an increase of 
fifteen feet in height, which will yield a further supply of water 
should it be needed, and the pumping-station will be designed 
to permit the installation of an additional 25,000,000 gallons 
pumping capacity. 

" The Birmingham Southern Eailroad Company will extend 
its tracks from near Wylam to the pumping-station for perma- 
nent use, and a temporary track to the site of the dam near Veni- 
son Creek for the delivery of material will be constructed. 



532 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA 



A camp for the employees engaged in the building of the 
dam will be built near the site. A thorough organization will be 
effected, and the entire work will be carried on by the Ten- 
nessee Company." 

When this water supply is secured it will be possible to 
proceed with the plans for extending the company's operations 
to meet the requirements of the Southern markets for which some 
plans have been made and are now in the course of execution. A 
large tract of land has been purchased which comprises all of 
the flat level lands in Opossum Valley, extending from Wylam on 
the north to Dolomite and the Woodward holdings on the 
south, and from the Flint Ridge holdings of the Tennessee 
Company on the east solidly to its large holdings of land on the 
Pratt Coal Field. This furnishes over a thousand acres of flat 
level land well adapted as sites for manufacturing plants. It 
lies on a direct line from the red ore holdings of the Tennessee 
Company on Red Mountain to its large holdings of coal land in 
the Pratt Coal Field. An excellent grade of dolomite is on the 
tract, and it is as close to the new water supply as is the Ensley 
steel plant. 

On this land, which is the cheapest point of assemblage, on a 
large scale, of ore, coal, flux, and water, in the Birmingham Dis- 
trict, the manufacturing plants of the Tennessee Company for 
the immediate future will be built. There is now under con- 
sideration on this site, the following plants : namely, a by-product 
coke oven plant with a capacity of 3,000 tons of coke per day; 
a gas engine driven electrical power plant of about 10,000 horse 
power to be furnished with fuel from the gases made in the by- 
product coke oven plant; and in the Pratt field, near the site 
of the new pumping station, a coal mining shaft of large capacity 
is being opened, with a modern mining camp of model design. 

On the portion of this land the American Steel and Wire Com- 
pany, a subsidiary of the United States Steel Corporation, is 
constructing a plant for the manufacture of wire, nails, and 
fencing, with a capacity of 400 tons per day. This plant will 
be of the most modern design, all of the machinery being driven 
by electric motors from current furnished from the new power 
plant built by the Tennessee Company. The supply of steel 
billets for this plant will also be furnished by the Tennessee 
Company. 

For nearly half a century this great company has stood at 



THE TRIUMPH OF THE T. C. I. 



533 



the front in the industrial affairs of the South. At no time 
in the whole of its tumultuous history did it come so near to 
crushing failure and utter collapse as during the panic of 1907, 
and the dramatic circumstances of its sudden merger with the 
United States Steel Corporation mark the most extraordinary 
step in all of its extraordinary history. 

And now the Crawford administration that is beginning to build 
on such a stupendous scale — who can forecast its end ? Certainly 
this new man in Alabama — this United States Steel Corporation 
man — has far-reaching plans for the future. He has, however, 
that rather peculiar notion in the background of his ideas that 
there are other issues at stake in the management of a coal and 
iron company as well as results in dollars and cents. In fact, he 
is one in spirit with the historian and the philosopher in these 
lines: "Industrialism is not altogether unlovely. Repellent as 
are many of its characteristics, selfish as are its aims, doubtful 
as are the means it frequently uses, it does yet sometimes, per- 
haps always, conduce to the accomplishment of worthier objects 
in better ways than those that fill the minds of its moving spirits. 
Great cities are built that money may be made; but great cities, 
when built, are the nurses of art and letters, the centers of en- 
lightenment, the fields of charity. . . . Let us hope, at least, that 
from the co-operation of so many energies something better and 
fairer than furnaces or mills can fashion may be contributed to 
the life of our country and of the world." 1 

u Culture loolcs beyond machinery. . . . Culture has one great 
passion, — the passion for sweetness and light. It has one even 
yet greater, — the passion for making them prevail" 2 

In a word, it is recognized that Alabama does not rest her sole 
reliance for future emprise upon her railroads and her coal and 
iron wealth, — and a little cotton, — but is coming to regard 
them as means to higher endeavor and achievement. To-day 
has come with its vast range of possibilities, — infinite promise 
of Alabama, — seen in long vista ahead as the modern lights are 
turned on. 

1 William Garrott Brown, "The History of Sheffield." 

2 Matthew Arnold, "Sweetness and Light." 



* 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 

Date. 

1798. First blacksmith shop at Took-au-batchee, Mississippi Territory 
(site of Fort Toulouse). 

1801. Federal Government smithy at Fort St. Stephens. 

1803. Depot of iron supplies at St. Stephens. 

1813-1820. Settlements founded by Andrew Jackson's smiths in mineral 
region. 

1818. First blast furnace of Alabama built. 

1819. Alabama admitted to Union. 

1820-1850. Forges erected in counties of Bibb, Shelby, Tuskaloosa, 
Talladega, and Calhoun. 

1827. First coal mined in Warrior Coal Field. 

1829. Mount Vernon Arsenal established. 

1830. Charter granted for Decatur and Tuscombia Railroad (first rail- 

road south of Alleghanies) . 

1846. Shelby Iron Works built by Horace Ware. 
1848. First State geologist appointed'. 

1854. First coke made from Alabama coals (for foundry use). 

Charter granted for Alabama Central Railroad (Old South and 

North, now part of Louisville and Nashville system). 

1858. First rolling mill built in State (at Shelby). 

Appropriation granted by Legislature for reconnaissance of route 

for South and North Railroad. 

1860. First finished bar iron turned out by Shelby Rolling Mill. 

1861-1865. Civil War Period. 

General Gorgas appointed Chief of Ordnance of Confederacy. 

Organization of Confederate Nitre and Mining Bureau. 

Arsenal transferred from Mount Vernon to Selma. 

Confederate Naval Foundry built. 

First underground mining in Cahaba coal field started. 

Blast furnaces built at Oxmoor, Irondale, and Brierfield. 

■ • Red Mountain iron ore first used on large scale. 



536 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 

Date. 

1865. Fall of Selma and destruction of all iron works. 

1866. Irondale Furnace rebuilt. 

1867- 1868. Reconstruction of plants in Bibb and Shelby counties. 

1868- 1869. David Thomas of Pennsylvania, pioneer of anthracite iron 

trade in America invests in Alabama mineral lands. 

1871. City of Birmingham founded by John T. Milner. 

Geological Survey Work inaugurated by University of Alabama. 

1872. Reconstruction of Oxmoor Plant by Daniel Pratt and Henry F. 

DeBardeleben. 

Advent of Louisville and Nashville into Alabama. 

Organization of Woodstock Iron Company. 

Founding of Anniston. 

1873. Panic. Cholera plague in Jones Valley. Fall of Birmingham. 

Re-establishment of State Geological Survey by Act of Legislature. 

Appointment of Eugene A. Smith, State Geologist. 

1874. Discovery of Pratt Seam of Coal. 

1875. Formation of Co-operative Experimental Coke and Iron Company. 

1876. First coke pig iron made in Alabama (Oxmoor). 

1877. Succession of coal seams in Warrior Field demonstrated "by Tru- 

man H. Aldrich. 

1878. Pratt Coal and Coke Company formed. 
— — Beginning of progress of Birmingham. 
1879-1880. First rolling mills built in Birmingham. 

First blast furnace (Alice), built in Birmingham. 

1882. Nail plant established at Brierfield. 

1886. Record of one hundred and fifty tons output of pig iron made by 

Alice Furnace (one day). 

Founding of Bessemer. Progress of Sheffield. 

1887. Record of one hundred and ninety-five tons daily output of pig 

iron successively maintained at Bessemer furnaces, marking 
first step in modern blast furnace practice. 

1886-1887. Entrance of Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company 
into Alabama. 

1889-1890. Export trade of coal with Gulf ports, West Indies, and South 
America inaugurated by T. H. Aldrich. 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 537 

Main Events in History of Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad 
Company, subsidiary company of United States Steel 
Corporation. 

Date. 

1850. Discovery of Sewanee Coal Seam by Leslie Kennedy. 

Purchase of coal lands on Cumberland Plateau by W. N. Bilbo of 

Nashville, Tennessee. Sale to New York speculators. 

1852. Organization of Sewanee Mining Company (parent stock of Ten- 

nessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company) . 

Charter granted by Tennessee Legislature. (Tracy admin- 
istration.) 

1853. Construction of company railroad begun. 
1856. First coal shipped. 

1858. Failure of company. Fresh capital invested. Reorganization plans. 

1861-1865. Property worked alternately by Confederate Government 
and Federal authorities. 

1866. Reorganization of company as Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad 
Company. Entrance of Colonel A. S. Colyar. Colyar admin- 
istration. 

1869. Construction of "The Fiery Gizzard." 

1870. New charter granted by State of Tennessee. 

1871. Contract made with State of Tennessee to work convicts. 

1881. Inman regime acquires control. First jronjs made by company. 

Sewanee Furnace acquired by company. Name changed to 
Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company. 

1882. Merger with Southern States Coal, Iron, and Land Company Ltd. 

Capital stock increased to three million dollars. Property 
listed on New York Stock Exchange. Warner administration. 

1885. Option secured on Pratt Coal and Coke Company of Alabama. 

1886. Purchase of Pratt Coal and Coke Company (comprising Pratt 

Mines, Linn Iron Works, and Alice Furnace Company. Capital 
stock increased to ten million dollars. Town of Ensley founded. 
Ensley administration. 

1887. Organization of First Engineer Corps of company by Erskine 

Ramsay. Baxter administration. 

1888. "The Big Four " at Ensley blown in. 

1889. Brown-Piatt administration. Duncan regime. 

1892. Acquisition of DeBardeleben Coal and Iron Company and Cahaba 
Coal Company. Capital stock made twenty million dollars. 
Entrance of DeBardeleben, T. H. Aldrich, and David Roberts. 
Headquarters of company removed to Birmingham. 



538 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 

Date. 

1895. Basic iron made on commercial scale by George B. McCormack. 

(Baxter administration.) 

1896. Export trade with European ports inaugurated. 

1898. (Baxter administration, continued.) Construction of steel plant 

begun. 

1899. First ton of steel made on Thanksgiving Day. 

1901. Don Bacon of Minnesota elected president. Reconstruction work 
inaugurated. 

1905. Topping-Crockard administration. Modern steel plant built. 

1907. United States Steel Corporation acquires control of Tennessee 

Company. 

1908. Present day administration under George Gordon Crawford. 

1909. Water supply provided. 

New properties acquired for future operations on a modern scale. 



INDEX 



Abbeville district, S. C, 319. 

Abbott, C. E., 528. 

Aberdeen, 118. 

Abernant Coal Co., 499. 

Adams, John H., quoted, 353, 354; 

biography of, 355-357. 
Adams Dam, J. N. Smith's forge at, 

70, 73, 172. 
Adger, A. M., 334, 340 

, Andrew, 331, 332, 340. 

, Robert, 331. 

Adirondack Mountains, value of 

ore lands in, 50. 
Adler, E. L., 437. 

, Edgar, 446. 

, Morris, 437. 

JStna Furnace Co., 317. 
iEtna Iron & Nail Works, 510. 
Agassiz, Prof., Michael Tuomey's 

correspondence with, 101. 
Age-Herald, the, quoted, 481 n. 
Agriculture, favored by Benjamin 

Hawkins, 6. 
Aiken, Gen. Hugh, 126. 
Aiken foundrv, the, 340. 
Akron, 170. 

Alabama. See Table of Contents. 

Alabama, its geological conditions 
favorable to the manufacture of 
iron and steel, xxv; early begin- 
nings of, xxv, xxvi. 

Alabama & Chattanooga R. R., the 
sixth in Alabama, 38; building 
of, 105; building of Birmingham, 
226; mentioned, 216, 218, 219, 
220, 221, 225, 243, 250, 252, 253, 
272, 284, 296, 319, 448. 

Alabama & Florida R. R. Co., Mi- 
ner engineer for, 111. 

Alabama & Tennessee Iron & Coal 
Co., 415, 418. 

Alabama & Tennessee Rivers R. R., 
fourth in Alabama, 38; men- 
tioned, 51; reaches Columbiana, 
79; chartered, 108, 109; timber 
land owned bv, 179, 180; men- 
tioned, 182, 206, 278. 

Alabama Asphalt Mining and Land 
Co., 341. 



Alabama Central R. R., granting of 
charter to, 104 ; building of, 105 ; 
Milner's report on, 113-118; 
controlled by Frank Gilmer, 123, 
124; mentioned, 202, 216. 

Alabama City, 446, 457. 

Alabama coal, introduced into New 
Orleans, 279-280; introduced 
into South America, etc., 297, 
298. 

Alabama Coal Mining Co., mines 
managed by W. L. Goold, 69; 
location of mines, 150; early 
working of, 153; Col. Storrs presi- 
dent of, 154, 155. 

Alabama Coal Operator's Assn., 
186 n., 393. 

Alabama Consolidated Coal and 
Iron Co., Horace Ware's work 
for, 76; Ironaton furnaces oper- 
ated by, 83 ; Jenifer furnace part 
of, 179; organized, 473, 479; its 
properties, 480; grows in im- 
portance, 481 ; mentioned, 35, 
294, 297, 323, 352, 358, 477, 484, 
486, 487. 

Alabama Factory, connected with 
Confederate arsenal, 135. 

Alabama Fertilizer Co., 203. 

Alabama Fuel & Iron Co., 427. 

Alabama furnace, 90, 316. See 
also Salt Creek Iron Works. 

Alabama Geological Survey, 264, 
268. 

Alabama Great Southern R. R., 
chartered in 1853, 38; building 
of, 105; mentioned, 51, 218, 243, 
288, 296, 307, 320, 351, 374, 448, 
458, 478. < 

Alabama, History of, xxiv. 

Alabama Industrial and Scientific 
Society, 352. 

Alabama Iron and Steel Co., 327, 
328. 

Alabama Iron Co., operate Jenifer 
furnace, 179; under Glidden's 
management, 476 n. 

Alabama Manual and Statistical 
Register, quoted, 409. 



540 



INDEX 



Alabama Mining & Manufacturing 
Co., 252. 

Alabama National Bank, 341, 348. 

Alabama Ore & Iron Co., 480. 

Alabama Polytechnic Institute, W. 
L. R. Brown president of, 130. 

Alabama Reporter, The, advertise- 
ments in, 88, 95. 

Alabama Rifles, the, 147. 

Alabama River, the, mentioned, 9, 
14, 135, 187, 213, 276. 

Alabama Rolling Mill, 186, 342, 356. 

Alabama South & North R. R., the 
seventh railroad in Alabama, 38, 
39. See also South and North. 

Alabama Statistical Register, The, 
204. 

Alabama Steel & Shipbuilding Co., 
430, 465. 

Alabama Steel and Wire Co., 308, 

441, 443, 444, 451, 452. 
Alabama- Virginia mines, 33. 
Alabamas, the, defeated by Cortez, 

8. 

Aldrich, George, 268. 

, Nelson W., 267. 

, T. H., Jr., 452. 

, Thomas Bailey, 267. 

, Truman H., opens Dailey 

Creek Basin, 151; Joseph Squire 
associated with, 153, 154; an- 
cestry and early life of, 267-269 ; 
settles in Alabama, 269; enters 
Alabama coal fields, 269, 270- 
272 ; partnership with Sloss, 272 ; 
with DeBardeleben, 273-277 ; or- 
ganizes Cahaba Coal Mining Co., 
295; other coal interests, 297; 
quoted, 150, 222 n., 234, 275, 298, 
351, 426, 433; organizes Southern 
Mining Co. and in service of Sloss- 
Shemeld Co., 452 ; mentioned, xxx. 
xxxiv, 22, 153, 210, 250, 265, 267, 
274, 278, 280, 284, 285, 290, 291, 
293, 296, 298, 307, 312, 336, 337, 
339, 340, 341, 346, 353, 383, 423, 
424, 425, 427, 428, 450, 451, 458, 
465, 474, 478, 529 n. 

• , William Farrington, 268. 

■ , William Farrington, Jr., 271, 

427 452. 

Aldrich Coal Mines, 153, 154. 

Alexander, John, partner of Mose 
Stroup, 67. 

■ , O. M., 92. 

"Alfred Shorter," the, locomotive, 

322. 
Alice, 237, 356. 

Alice furnace, the, 199, 293, 304, 
306, 490. 

Alice Furnace Co., established, 283, 
284, 285, 287; consolidated 



with Pratt Coal & Coke Co., 291 ; 
mentioned, 307, 339, 361, 425, 
490. 

Alice slope, 472. 

All Angels Church (Anniston), 321, 
322. 

Alleghany Mountains, 113 n., 114. 
Allegheny, Pa., 300. 
Allegheny County, Va., 484. 
Allen, J. V., 496. 

, W. B., 513, 528. 

Allentown, Pa., 354. 
Ally farm, 371, 378, 384. 
Allyn, Adelaide Julia, 264. 
Alta, 502. 

Altoona, Ga., 65, 444. 

Alvis, Capt. Thomas S., career of, 
137; associated with Simon Gay, 
145; iron master of Canebrake 
Co., 204; leases Bibb furnace, 
207; mentioned, 136. 

America mines, 503. 

American & British Manufacturing 
Co., 484. 

American Bridge Co., 520. 

American Coal & Coke Co., 451. 

American Institute of Mining En- 
gineers, 278, 499. 

American Locomotive Co., 483. 

American Manufacturer & Iron 
World, 428. 

American Ordnance Works of 
Bridgeport, 483, 484. 

American Pipe & Foundry Co., of 
Chattanooga, 442. 

American Sheet & Tin Plate Co., 511. 

American Sheet Steel Co., 510, 511, 
520. 

American Society of Civil Engineers, 
499. 

American Steel and Wire Co., 359, 
520, 532. 

American Steel Hoop Co., 510, 520. 

American Tin Plate Co., 510, 511. 

American Trust & Savings Bank, 
Birmingham, 382. 

Amerine, , 82. 

Amity, Ark., 40 n. 

Amoskeag Fire Engine Co., 484. 

Anderson, Alexander, partner of 
Joseph Squire, 155. 

Andrews, A. B., 453. 

Anglesey, 331. 

Annie Mae mines, 503. 

Anniston, Old Oxford furnace at, 
179; founding of, 185, 310, 311; 
called Woodstock, 314, 315; in- 
corporated, 315; developed by 
Samuel Noble, 321; mentioned, 
xxiv, xxix, 90, 92, 94, 180, 182, 
184 n., 295, 297, 302, 313, 316, 
322, 323, 324, 413, 441, 442, 505, 



INDEX 



541 



Anniston Car Wheel and Axle 

Works, 340. _ 
Anniston District, xxxiii, 76, 346, 

475. 

Anniston Foundry and Machine 
Co., 322. 

Anniston Pipe & Foundry Co., 
442. 

Anniston Pipe Works Co., 316. 

Appalachian region, xxix. 

Appalachian Valley, xxix. 

Appomattox, 349. 

Arcade coal pits, the, 154. 

Arkansas, 328, 380. 

Armstrong, , in defense of 

Selma, 190-194. 

, F. H., 301. 

Army of the Potomac, the, 299. 
Army of the Tennessee, the, 296. 
Arnold, Matthew, quoted, 533. 
Ashby, mentioned, 151, 173, 206, 

207. 

Ashby Brick Co., 499. 

Ashby Brick Works, run by J. G. 

Oakley, 137. 
Ashland Plateau, xxix. 
Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe 

R. R., 326. 
Athens, Col. Sloss starts in business 

in, 108. 
Athey, J. H., 165. 
Atkins, Stephen, 83. 
Atkinson, H. M., 437. 
Atlanta, Ga., mentioned, xxx, 97, 

140 n., 147, 221, 246, 322, 454, 

525. 

Atlanta, Birmingham, & Atlantic 

R. R., 437. 
Atlanta Constitution, the, 311, 315; 

quoted, 314, 409, 415. 
Atlanta Exposition (1895), 265. 
Atlantic and Gulf R. R., 337. 
Attalla, 310, 319, 320, 323, 480. 
Auburn, 130. 
Augusta, Ga., 83. 
Australia, 332. _ 
Autauga County, Daniel Pratt sets 

up mills in, 162; transformed by 

him, 163; mentioned, 240, 264, 

270. 
Avondale, 306. 
Avondale Cotton Mills, 236. 
Avondale Land Co., 236, 342. 

"B. B. & B," the old. See Brier- 
field. 

Babcock, Col., 377. 

Bache, Professor, Michael Tuomey's 

correspondence with, 101. 
Bachus, Col., 364. 

Bacon, Don H., biography, 468, 
469; president of Tenn. Co., 495, 



507, 508; mentioned, 139, 509, 
529. 

Bailey, Emma, 201. 
Bain, D. M., 214. 
Baker, George F., 517. 

, George O., 75. 

Baldwin, Summerfield, 474. 
Ball, Col. Charles Pollard, 400, 
422. 

-, Edwin, biography, 470, 471; 

his management of Tennessee 
Co. ore mines, 472, 473; men- 
tioned, 513, 528. 

, Thomas, 470. 

Ballenger, Claiborne, 57. 

, John, 53. 

Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, 279. 
Baltimore, Md., 53, 325, 331, 352, 
500. 

Bancroft, quoted, 3. 

Bank of the Union of Nashville, 

Tenn., 529. 
Bank Saloon, 258. 
Bankhead, J. H., 342. 
Banks, first established in Alabama, 

35 37 
Banks, J. O., 501. 
Bankston, Miss., 98. 
Bannard, Otto T., 447. 
Banner mine, 494. 
Barbour, William, 468. 
Barbour County, 236. 
Barclay, W., 342. 
Barker, Maj. William P., 226. 

, N. E., 448, 465. 

Barney, Capt. E. G., 165, 206, 

317. 

, Major A. E., 364, 365, 381. 

Barnwell, Charlotte. See Elliott, 

Mrs. R. H. 
Barr, C. J., 513, 528. 

, J. H., 465. 

, J. M., 324 n. 

Barrett, Ada Louisa, 387. 

, Henry, 385. 

, William, 385, 388. 

Barron Furnace, the, 262. 

Barton, Albert E., mentioned, 428, 

462; biography, 429; quoted, 

433, 434; returns to England, 

456. 

Barton family, the, 42. 
Barton's Creek, 55. 
Bartow, 314. 

Basic iron, first experiment, 424 ; 

making on large commercial scale, 

431-435. 
Basic steel, 523. 
Bass Car Wheel plant, the, 319. 
Bass, J. H., 319. 
Bath County, Ky., 59. 
Baton Rouge, Miss., 128, 189. 



542 



INDEX 



Battle Creek, 378. 
Battle House, 15. 

Baxter, Nat., Jr., in the Civil War, 
371; biography, 383, 384; in 
the Tennessee Co., 390, 392, 394, 
396, 400, 406, 423, 424, 425, 426, 
429, 430, 431, 434, 435, 462, 465, 
466, 508 ; resigns from presidency 
of Tennessee Co., 467, 468; men- 
tioned, 361, 379, 529; quoted, 
364. 

■ , Robert, 210. 

Beach Creek, 188, 189, 192, 194. 
Bear Creek, 31. 
Bearmeat Cabin, 41, 43. 
Bear Spring furnace, 257. 
Beaver Dam Creek, 155. 
Beecher, L. T., 468, 511, 527. 
Beggs, Hamilton T., stove foundry 

of, 143; employed at Shelby, 

177; partner of Billy Goold, 260; 

mentioned, 148. 
Beggs stove factory, 340. 
Belgium, 387. 
Bell and Bilbo, 363. 
Bell. Cotton Factory, 37. 
Bell, John, 363. 

, Sir Lowthian, 301, 410. 

, Montgomery, 211. 

Bellaire, Ohio, 510. 
Belle Ellen coal mines, 325, 326. 
Belle Sumter mines, 332. 
Belmont, O. H. P., 465. 

Belser, Major , 107. 

Belt Line R. R., 229. 
Bench Field, 54. 
Bendusia Academy, 286. 
Benet, Gen. St., 142. 
Benham, Nathan, 475 n. 
Benners, Augustus, 447. 

Benson, , 72. 

, William, 53. 

Benton County, 90, 95. 

Benton Iron Works, in Calhoun 

County, 91, 179. 
Bergens, 504. 
Berney Bank, 290, 341. 
Berney National Bank, 448. 
Berney, William, 335, 341. 
Berwind, Edward J., 359. 
Berwynd, E. J., 515. 
Bess, John, 53. 

Bessemer, mentioned, 23, 41, 52, 
151, 261, 297, 337, 339, 342, 411, 
456, 514; building up of, 333- 
335. 

Bessemer and Birmingham R. R. 

Co., 337. 
Bessemer Co., the, 326. 
Bessemer Coal, Iron, & Land Co., 

448. 

Bessemer furnace, 263, 338. 



Bessemer Land and Improvement 
Co., incorporated, 334-335; men- 
tioned, 337, 340. 

Bessemer project, 395. 

Bessemer rails, 523. 

Bessemer Rolling Mill Co., 425. 

Bessemer Rolling Mills, 335, 337, 
355. 

Bessemer, Sir Henry, 334, 466. 
Bessemer Steel Co., 335. 
Bessemer steel industry, 521. 
Bessemer Weekly, the, quoted, 33. 
Best, E. J., 513, 528. 
Bethlehem, Pa., 229, 355, 524. 
Bibb, 505. 

, Benjamin, 244. 

, B. S., 162, 255. 

, William Wyatt, first gov- 
ernor of Alabama, 35. 

Bibb Branch Coal and Coke Co., 
340. 

Bibb County, early houses in, 24; 
represented by Jesse Mahan, 25; 
interest of, 40 ; J. N. Smith's forges 
in, 46; D. Hillman in, 60; first 
iron making in, 70-81, 98; isola- 
tion of, 122; coal supplied by, 
149-151; iron making during 
war, 157; more furnaces built in, 
169, 172; railroad in, 173; men- 
tioned, 137, 184, 186, 196, 295, 
324, 325, 328, 353, 457, 479, 499, 
500. 

Bibb furnace, excellence of iron 

from, 144, 327; built by C. C. 

Huckabee, 169 ; reconstruction 

of, 204-207; history of, 324; 

mentioned, 186. 
Bienville, founds Ft. Toulouse, 7; 

makes peace, 8. 
"Big Alice," 287, 293. 
Big Cahaba River, the, 73. 
Big Cane Creek, 489. 
"Big Four, The," Ensley furnaces, 

411, 412. 
Big Mt., Tenn., 495. 
Big Sandy Iron and Steel Co., 297, 

336. 

Big Seam, 492, 493, 496. 
Big Warrior, 490, 491. 
Biggar, Mary, wife of Colonel Sloss, 
108. 

Bilbo, William N., biography of, 

363-364. 
Bill, W. R., 135. 
Billups, J. S., 501. 
Bilston, Eng., 355. 
Bindley, John, 445. 
Birmingham, first building in, 3; 

founded, 11, 41, 125; importance 

to coal and iron industry, 19; 

location, 113; early furnacemen 



INDEX 543 



of, 137; organization of _ Jeffer- 
son County Savings Bank in, 148 ; 
railroad communication with coal 
regions of Dailey Creek, 151; 
growing importance of district 
of, 161; first foundry and ma- 
chine shop in, 177; founding of, 
221, 237; cholera at, 253, 254; 
efforts to revive, 258, 259; influ- 
ence of Pratt mines on, 274, 278 ; 
great boom of, 330-346; men- 
tioned, xxiv, xxix, xxx, xxxi, 

xxxii, 34, 47, 55, 67 n., 76, 78 n., 
80, 90 n., 95, 110 n., 138, 143, 
145 n., 159 n., 171, 173 n., 203, 204, 
221 n., 225-240, 242, 243, 244, 245, 
249, 250, 256, 260, 261, 263, 272, 
273, 284, 285, 287, 289, 292, 294, 
295, 298, 306, 308, 310, 316, 324, 
329, 349, 351, 352, 355, 356, 358, 
374, 382, 384, 395, 397, 399, 400, 
407, 413, 414, 415, 416, 419, 425, 
426, 427, 428, 429, 436, 445, 451, 
452, 455, 457, 458, 465, 466, 472, 
473, 474, 478, 479, 481 n., 490, 
492, 494, 497, 499, 503, 514. 

Birmingham Age, the, quoted, 
234 n. 

Birmingham Age-Herald, the, 40, 
237, 337; quoted, 332-333, 519. 

Birmingham Axe and Tool Co., 342. 

Birmingham Bridge and Bolt Works, 
342. 

Birmingham Camp, the, 225, 236. 
Birmingham Chain Works, 236, 340, 
342. 

Birmingham Chamber of Commerce, 

410, 479. 
Birmingham Coal Co., 437. 
Birmingham Coal and Iron Co., 21, 

61, 212, 228, 287, 436, 437, 449, 

490 n. 

Birmingham District, the, 11; R. 
N. Rhodes' connection with, 21; 
first industrial workings of, 22; 
early families in, 34; reason for 
importance of, 36; headquar- 
ters of coal and iron men in, 46 ; 
first furnacemen of, 137; influ- 
ence of Squire and Goold in, 151 ; 
development of, 275, 278, 283; 
importance of, 301, 346; cost of 
making iron in, 302-306; advent 
of Tennessee Co. into, 360; lack 
of water, 530; mentioned, xxv, 

xxxiii, xxxiv, 148, 199, 210, 212, 
237, 238, 250, 256, 257, 258, 260, 
261, 262, 267. 272, 277, 281, 
285, 288, 290, 293, 294, 298, 300, 
306, 307, 308, 309, 310, 331, 335, 
337, 338, 339, 342, 343, 348, 351, 
352, 356, 466, 467, 468, 469, 470, 



473, 474, 477, 478, 483, 484, 489, 
490, 492, 494, 499, 500, 503, 505, 
508, 510, 512, 520, 521, 525, 529. 

Birmingham District Coal Opera- 
tors' Association, 479. 

Birmingham District iron and coal 
companies, xxiv. 

Birmingham, England, 223, 355. 

Birmingham-Ensley Land and Im- 
provement Co., 340. 

Birmingham First National Bank, 
290, 307. 

Birmingham Foundry & Car Man- 
ufacturing Co., 228. 

Biiroingham Gas Electric Co., 
237. 

Birmingham Gas & Illuminating Co., 
228. 

Birmingham Herald Co., 337. 
Birmingham Insurance Co., 236. 
Birmingham Iron Co., 437, 441. 
Birmingham Iron Works, the, 340, 
342. 

Biirningham Machine and Foundry 

Co., 285, 342. 
Birmingham Mineral R. R., 229, 

280, 307, 472, 494. 
Birmingham News, the, 21, 298, 465, 

466 ; quoted, 509, 520. _ 
Birmingham, press of, xxiv. 
Birmingham Railway and Electric 

Co., 490 n. 
Birmingham Railway Light and 

Power Co., 229, 237, 355, 448. 
Birmingham Real Estate and In- 
vestment Co., 342. 
Birmingham Rolling Mill Co., 463, 

464. 

Birmingham Rolling Mills, estab- 
lished, 283, 284, 339; mentioned, 
285, 306, 355, 356. 

Birmingham, Sheffield, & Tennes- 
see River R. R., 503. 

Birmingham Southern R. R., 457, 
514, 531. 

Birmingham Street Railway Co., 
236. 

Birmingham Trust and Savings Co., 
308. 

Birmingham Water Works, 530. 
Black, Harry S., 359, 515. 
Black Creek coal, 280. 
Black Creek mines, 503. 
Black Creek seam, 271, 354, 493, 
504. 

Black Crow Coal Co., 499. 

Black Forest, 525. 

Black Rock Shoals, 54. 

Black Warrior, xxix. 

Black Warrior River, the, 18, 44, 

63, 160. 
Blackwater Creek, 57, 489. 



544 



INDEX 



Blair, Gen. , destroys Cornwall 

furnace, 185. 
Blakeley guns, 143. 
Blast furnace, first in Alabama, 27. 
Blocton, 151, 296, 297, 323, 326, 

334, 336, 424, 458. 
Blocton-Cahaba Coal Co., 151, 479. 
Blocton coal, 298. 
Blossburg, 438, 457. 
Blount, 50. 

Blount County, importance of, 40; 
Jefferson County carved out of, 
43; small iron supply of, 58; 
iron works in, 98; mentioned, 
23, 235, 236, 308, 443, 444 n., 
458, 504. 

Blount Springs, mentioned, 22, 113, 

201, 243. 
Blountsville, 43. 

Blue Creek, 297, 307, 336, 338, 500. 

Blue Creek mines, 338, 424. 

Blue Mountain Station, destroyed, 

181; mentioned, 180, 182, 206. 
"Bluff City," the, 134, 187. 
Bluff furnace, the, 175, 176. 
Boardman, Albert B., 465, 468. 

, Norman, 475 n. 

Boise City, Idaho, 265. 

Boissevain, D. G., 447. 

Boland, Richard W., 285, 342. 

Boland's foundry, 340. 

Bolona Arsenal, Va., 145. 

Bonaparte, Charles T., 517, 518. 

Bond, H. G., 420. 

Bones, J. W., 319. 

Bonneyman, James, 449. 

Boone, Daniel, 235. 

Boston, Mass., 216, 221, 307. 

Boston Iron and Steel Works, 526. 

Boughton, C. S., 447. 

Bowie, A. W., 82. 

Bowling Green, Ky., 246. 

Bowron, James, xxiv. 

, James, Sr., 289, 301 n, 331, 

377, 378, 384, 385, 386, 387, 388, 

389, 390. 

, James, Jr., 385, 387, 388, 

389, 390, 392, 394, 400, 423, 425, 
429, 432, 435, 443, 464, 465, 466; 
quoted, 463. 

, John, 386. 

, Joseph, 388. 

Bowron family, 386 n. 

Boyce, James P., 175. 

Boyle, Bartley, 250. 

Bradford, Gov. William, 264. 

Brady, A. N., 515. 

Bragg, Gen. Braxton, quoted, 127, 
128, 132, 133; mentioned, 241. 

Bratton, Thomas C, 159. 

Bray, Thomas J., 358. 

Brazil, 438, 457. 



Breckenridge, Richard, 52. 
Breed, Abel, 262. 

, James, 262. 

Brickell, Judge Robert, 107. 
Bridgeport, 510. 

Brierfield, first settlement of, 24; 
Confederate rolling mill at, 25; 
first smiths settle in, 71; Wm. 
McCollum at, 137; excellence of 
iron from, 144; mills at, 170-172; 
destruction of, 194; rebuilt, 195, 
204; desertion of, 328; men- 
tioned, 164, 186, 201, 206, 207, 
326, 500. 

Brierfield, Miss., 169. 

Brierfield Arsenal, at Columbia, 
Miss., 136. 

Brierfield, Blocton & Birmingham 
R. R., 297. 

Brierfield Coal and Iron Co., 325, 
326, 327, 339, 440. 

Brierfield furnace, 171, 172; S. G. 
Wilson, manager of, 169; pur- 
chased by Col. Shepard, 171, 172; 
excellence of iron from, 144; 
mentioned, 187, 201, 206, 207, 
230, 325, 326, 327. See also Bibb 
furnace. 

Brierfield nail plant, the, 327, 

328 

Brierfield rolling mill, 147, 186, 325. 

Brighthope furnace, the, 112, 169; 
establishment before the war, 
70; referred to by Tuomey, 75; 
ruins of, 76 ; built by Mr. Browne, 
112; interest of J. N. Smith in, 
169; destruction of, 194; men- 
tioned, 186, 201. 

Brilliant Coal Co., 428. 

British Iron & Steel Institute, 410. 

British Iron Trade Association, 522. 

, Gen. P. H., 294. 

Brittan, Lucy, 294. 

Brockenshire family, the, 184. 

Brocks Gap, 124, 197. 

Brooks, , 150. 

, John Y., 449. 

Brooks & Gainer, 135, 150. 

Brookside, 438, 457. 

Brookwood, 478. 

Brothers, P., 92. 

Browden, Dr., 204. 

Brown, A. M., 262. • 

, Alexander, 331. 

, Charles G., 408. 

, Franklin A., 447. 

, George W., 329. 

, Joe, governor of Georgia, 263, 

289. 

, John, capture of, 126. 

, John C, 529. 

, Judge Milton, 98. 



INDEX 



545 



Brown, William Garrott, quoted, 
413, 416, 533. 

, William Le Roy, 130. 

Brown Coal mines, 150. 
Brown coal pit, the, 154. 
Brown family, the, 42. 
Brown-Marx Building, 228. 
Browne, Cecil, 75. 

, John C, 420, 421. 

, W. B., 143. 

, William P., one of early iron- 
masters, 70; sells his mines, 75; 
owns Montevallo mines, 154, 155; 
interest in Brighthope furnace, 
169; mentioned, 112. 

Browne & Phil Weaver coal mine, 
153. 

Browne seam, the, 260, 272; name 

changed to Pratt, 273. 
Brownes Dam, 75, 76. 
Browning, John H., 475 n. 
Bruce, Robert, 459. 
Bruce mines, 503. 
Brumby, Prof., 63. 
Brunswick and Albany R. R., 337. 
Bryan, Joseph, 453. 
Buchanan, Franklin, 145 n. 
Buck, Col. A. E., 317, 318. 
Buck, C. E., 445, 446. 
Buck and Hale, iron makers, 

30. 

Buckley, Judge Charles W., 317, 
318. 

"Bucksnort," 226. 
Bucksville, 61. 

Buford, , 201. 

Buford County, S. C, 338. 

Bull Bottom, 56. 

Bull Run, Battle of, 313. 

Bunker Hill, 25. 

Burk, F. F., 414. 

Burke, Gen. Joseph W., 310, 317, 

318, 501. 

, Major, 335. 

Burnett, Senator, 119. 
Burnham, R. H., 475 n. 
Burns, Benjamin, 25. 

, Mike, 529. 

, Theodore, 25. 

Burnsides, , 30. 

Burnsville, 188, 192. 
Burr, F. A., 513, 528. 
Burton family, the, 54. 
Busbv, Stephen, 53. 
Bush, Capt. Floyd, 96. 

, Col. J. W., 407, 409. 

, Thomas Greene, 80, 294, 446, 

473, 474, 475, 476, 479, 480, 

481. 
Butler, 119. 

Butler County, Ga., 117. 
Butting Ram Shoals, 93. 



Byers, Joshua Stagg, 385. 
Byrne, Patrick, 299. 

Cadle, Col. Cornelius, 271, 284, 
295, 458; biography of, 296. 

Cahaba, first capital of Alabama, 
18, 58; decay of, 19; mentioned, 
xxix, 189, 191, 194, 203, 207. 

Cahaba Bridge, 69. 

Cahaba Coal Co., 450, 458. 

Cahaba coal field, discovery of, 25; 
crossed by South & North R. R., 
124, 173; impetus given by rail- 
road, 149; examination of, by 
Squire, 152; mentioned, 206, 
253, 260, 271, 296, 326, 334, 500. 

Cahaba Coal Mining Co., 283, 284, 
307, 339, 423, 424, 425, 440; 
history of, 295-298. 

Cahaba County, 71. 

Cahaba Hills, the, 75, 151, 192. 

Cahaba Iron Works, mentioned, 
161, 165, 186; destruction of, 
194; rebuilt, 195; mentioned, 
196, 200. See also Irondale. 

Cahaba River, the, origin of name, 
10; Creek tribe on, 43; coal 
mines on, 150, 253, 295; men- 
tioned, 9, 42, 44, 61, 72, 207. 

Cain, Elizabeth, 55. 

, James, 53, 54, 55, 502. 

, Robert, 54. 

Caldwell, 335. 

Caldwell, H. M., mentioned, 222, 
342; quoted, 231. 

, James G., 306. 

, John C, 218. 

, Rev. John, 42. 

, W. B., 284, 331. 

, W. B., Jr., 284. 

Caldwell's record of Elyton Land 
Co., quoted, 344. 

Caldwell's Station, 253. 

Calera, terminal of Alabama Cen- 
tral R. R., 123; mentioned, 22, 
107, 112, 124, 197, 206, 217, 225, 
260, 272. 

Calhoun, 119. 

Calhoun, Hon. J. M., 119. 

, John C, 45. 

Calhoun County, special interest 
of, 40; iron works built by 
Jacob Stroup in, 65; operations 
in, 82, 90, 92, 98; isolation of, 
122; iron making under Con- 
federacy, 157; Benton Iron Works 
in, 179; records of, destroyed, 
183; record of making pig iron 
in, 310; mentioned, 182, 186, 
275, 309, 318, 328. 

California, 111, 114, 317. 

Callahan, Joshua, 25. 



35 



546 



INDEX 



Callie furnace, the, 302. 
Calumet mines, 503. 
Camak, Dr. Moses, 57. 
Cambria iron works, 115. 
Camden, 137, 138. 
Cameron, W. J., 342. 
Camp branch, 531. 
Camp branch forge, 70, 80. 
Camp, James, 70, 71, 72. 
Campbell & Co., 99. 
Campbell, E. K., 447. 

, Elizabeth Moore, 453. 

, Jasper N., 153. 

, Judge Richard L., President 

of Oxford Iron Co., 179. 
Campbell's Factory, 135. 
Camps bloomery, the, 70, 73. 
Canadian Pacific Co., 483. 
Canal, first in Alabama, 37. 
Canebrake Co., 204, 207. 
Cane Creek branch, L. & N. R. R. 

Co., 493. 

Cane Creek, iron works at, 91-95; 
origin of name, 94; mentioned, 
56. 

Cane Creek Iron Works, built by 
J. Stroup and N. Goode, 75, 91; 
destroyed by Gen. Rousseau, 93, 
179; method of operation, 93, 
94; furnishes armor for Merri- 
mac, 141 ; iron from, first used 
in gun making, 144; A. K. Shep- 
ard connected with, 170; first 
furnace in Calhoun County, 179 ; 
mentioned, 181, 186. 

Cane Creek mines, 326. 

Cane Creek Mountains, 181. 

Canfield, M. P., 297. 

Canton, 118. • 

Caponfield mills (Eng.), 355. 

Carbon Hill, 497, 498, 500, 501. 

Carbon Hill mines, 503. 

Carbondale, Pa., 174, 230. 

Cardiff, 438, 457. 

Carew, Edith, 315 n. 

Carey, A. W., 528. 

Carnegie, Andrew, 275, 404, 521. 

Carnegie Company, 275, 520. 

Carnegie Institute, 208. 

Carnegie Lucy Furnaces, 402. 

Carnegie Steel Co., 469, 486, 525, 526. 

Carpet-bag rule, 73, 216, 243. 

Carrington, J. B., 324 n., 501. 

Carroll, Thomas, 45. 

Carrollsville, 44. 

Carter brothers, the, 171, 325. 

Carter, , 150. 

, Dr. B. N., 257. 

, Kearsley, 324. 

, Louisa Ross, wife of L. S. 

Goodrich, 257. 

, Thos., 92. 



Carter, W. D., 324. 
Carthagena, Spain, 388. 
Carver, R. D., 445. 
Case, Newton, 475 n. 

, O. D., 475 n. 

Cass County, Ga., 65, 75. 

Casson's " Romance of Steel," 

quoted, 352. 
Castle Hill, Va., 250. 
Catalan forges, xxvii n. 
Catasauqua, Pa., 175, 176, 262. 
Cauley, Elizabeth, 55. 
Cedar Bluff, Cornwall furnace at, 

184. 

Cedar charcoal, used as fuel, 29. 
Cedar Creek, operations begun at, 

29, 30; abandoned, 31, 32, 157; 

mentioned, 28, 34, 60, 148, 201, 

352 

Cedar Point, N. Y., 289. 

Cellini, Benvenuto, 343. 

Centennial Exposition, the, 289. 

Center furnace, See Centre. 

Central Alabamian, The, 46. 

Central America, 297. 

Central Bank, 341. 

Central City Foundry, 135. 

Central City Iron Works, 135. 

Central Coal Co., 236. 

Central Coal & Iron Co., 61. 

Central Georgia R. R., 448, 496. 

Central Iron & Coal Co., 429. 

Central iron works, 147. 

Central Mining & Manufacturing 
Co., 207. 

Central R. R. of Alabama, 503. 

Central Trust Co., 342. 

Centre, Ky., 257. 

Centre furnace, 257, 286. 

Chalmers, , in defense of 

Selma, 190, 191, 192. 

Chalybeate Mountain, 91. 

Chamber of Commerce, Birming- 
ham, mentioned, xxiv, 235. 

Chamberlain, Captain, 405. 

, H. S., 338. 

Chambers, W. S., 414. 

Chambers County, 90, 336. 

Chambless family, the, 48. 

Chambliss, Lieut. R. V., 136. 

Champion, 336, 424, 458. 

Champion mine, the, discovered by 
Hanby, 23. 

Chandler, E. G., 446. 

Chapel Hill, N. C, 428. 

Chapman, Elverton R., 468. 

, Gov. R., 100. 

Charcoal Chemical Works, 419. 

"Charles O'Malley," 108. 

Charleston, S. C, mentioned, 118, 
126, 164, 239, 312, 330, 331, 332, 
333, 335, 338, 413. 



INDEX 



547 



Chase, Major , 113 n. 

Chateaudun, France, 386. 

Chatham Academy (Savannah), 338. 

Chattanooga, Tenn., the Edwards 
family at, 175, 176; Begg's 
foundry started at, 177; men- 
tioned, 139, 147, 166 n, 185, 199, 
216, 220, 225, 243, 244, 245, 278, 
318, 355, 363, 374, 377, 378, 382, 
445. 

Chattanooga furnace, the, 302. 

Chattanooga Iron Co., 445. 

Chattanooga River, the, Cornwall 
furnace on, 184. 

Cheaha Creek foundry, 182. 

Chenoweth, S. R., 445. 

Cherokee County, Moses Stroup's 
furnace in, 22, 65; importance 
of, 40, 82 ; supplying iron to Con- 
federacy, 183; iron making in, 
316-319; mentioned, 90, 96, 98, 
157, 185, 186, 309, 311. 

Cherokees, the, 3, 52, 90. 

Cherry, Juliet, 382. 

, W. H., 379, 382, 383. 

Cherry, O'Connor & Co., 375. 

Chesapeake and Ohio districts, the, 
302. 

Chesapeake & Ohio R. R., 440. 
Chesterfield County, Va., 145. 
Chicago, 111., xxx, 139, 171, 359. 
Chicago Board of Trade Battery, 
194 n. 

Chicago Inter-Ocean, the, 301 n. 
Chicago, Milwaukee, & St. Paul 

R. R., 483. 
Chickasaw, 30. 

Chickasaw Cession, the, 27, 58. 
Chickasaw Mine, 497. 
Chickasaw mines, 503. 
Chickasaws, the, 3, 21, 34, 52. 
Chillicothe, Ohio, 59. 
Chilton, Richard, 54, 55. 

, William P., 95. 

Chinnebee forge, 82, 87. 
Chloe, Aunt, former slave, 354. 
Choccollocco Creek, 88, 89. 
Chocolloco Iron Works, 186, 201. 
Choctaw Coal & Mining Co., 497, 
499. 

Choctaws, the, government treaties 

with, 6; mentioned, 3, 12, 46, 235. 
Church Brothers, 200. 
Churchill, Capt. C. B., 143. 
Churchill, C. B. & Co., foundry, 143. 
Cincinnati, Ohio, mentioned, 60, 

165, 197, 211, 246, 261, 266, 287, 

325, 336, 355, 440. 
Cincinnati Inquirer, the, 326. 
Cincinnati Southern R. R., 440. 
City National Bank of Birmingham, 

448. 



Civil War, 90, 91, 93, 105, 264, 286, 

296, 299, 313, 33$, 370, 383, 384, 

420, 472, 498. 

Clabaugh, , 71. 

, Samuel, establishes Salt Creek 

Iron works, 178, 476 n. 
Clabaugh & Curry, firm of, 178, 179, 

476 n. 

Claghorn, Clarence R., 428. 
Clairmont Spring forge, 82. 

Clanton, Gen. , 182. 

Clapp, Caleb, 475 n. 
Clark, Gaylord B., 501. 
Clark and Co., Louis V., 342. 
Clark County, Ark., 40 n. 
Clarke County, 91, 147. 
Clarke seam, the, 150. 
Clarkesville, 235. 

Clarksville, Tenn., 466, 484, 486. 
Clay County, 90. 

Clayborn, , 74. 

Clayton, Judge Henry D., president 

Eureka Mining Co., 238. 
Cleaver, A. N., 357. 
Cleburne County, 90. 
Clegg, Adam De, 152. 

, Thomas, 152. 

Clements, F. B., 342. 
Clement's Station, 253. 
Cleveland, Ohio, 142, 171. 
Cleveland Institute of Engineers, 

385. 

Cleveland Iron Mining Co., 468. 
Cleveland region, the (England), 
301, 302. 

Clews, Henry, in Oxford Steel Co., 
180. 

Clifton Forge, 440. 

Clifton Iron Co., Jenifer furnace 
made part of, 179; developed by 
Samuel Noble, 316; mentioned, 
323, 473, 476, 479. 

Clifton Land Co., 342. 

Clifton properties, 473. 

Climax Coal Co., 143, 328. 

Clinton, Thomas P., 158. 

Clopton, David, 202, 255, 414. 

Coal, in general, see Table of Con- 
tents. 

Coal Branch, 74. 

Coal Creek, 490. 

Coal Valley, 502. 

Coalburg, 457. 

Coalburg Coal and Coke Co., 293, 

339, 349, 438. 
Coalmont, Tenn., 365. 
Cobb, John W., 17. 

, Gov. R. W., 17, 147. 

Cockes, Gen., 21. 
Coffee, Col. John, 52. 
Coffin, J. N., 527. 
Coit, Samuel, 475 n. 



548 



INDEX 



Coke, first made in Alabama, 68. 
Coke pig iron first made, 261. 
Coker, F. M., 414. 

, L., 92. 

, W. N., 92. 

Colbert County, 29, 36, 352, 412, 
413. 

Colbert Iron Co., 451. 

Cole, Col. E. W., 378, 415. 

Coleanor Coal mines, 151. 

Coleman, Judge A. A., quoted, 56. 

, Thomas, 284. 

Coleman mines, 326. 

Collard, George L., 513. 

College Hill Land Co,, 340. 

Coller, Sage & Durham's Cast Iron 
Pipe Works, 142. 

Collier, C. A., 414. 

Collins, , 204. 

Colorado, 296, 326, 471. 

Colorado Iron & Fuel Co., 449. 

Colston & Jones, 289. 

Columbia, Miss., Brierfield Arsenal 
at, 136, 177. 

, Maury County, 383. 

Columbiana, reached by Alabama 
& Tennessee Rivers R. R., 79; 
C. B. Churchill & Co. locate at, 
143; works constructed by Pea- 
cock at, 144; mentioned, 99, 177, 
505. 

Columbus County, N. C, 203. 
Columbus, Ga., 80, 311. 
Columbus & Macon R. R., 111. 
Columbus, Miss., 52, 97, 98, 502. 
Colyar, Arthur St. Clair, 371, 372, 

373, 374, 375, 376, 379, 381, 388, 

528, 529. 
Comanche, Texas, 62. 
Comer, Braxton Bragg, 426. 
Commercial Review of the South, 

105. 

Compton, Maj. J. C, 136. 

Conechar, Alexander, 330, 331. 

Confederacy, the, Navy yard at 
Selma, 15, 69; chief of ordnance 
of, 17; 46; coal supplied to, 75; 
iron supplied to, 93; aids develop- 
ment of mineral region, 124; ord- 
nance department of, 125-147; 
coal mining under, 149-156; iron 
making under, 157-186; capture 
and destruction of Selma, 187- 
194. 

Confederate Congress. 529. 
Confederate Nitre and Mining Bu- 
reau, 219. 
Confederate States Army, 529. 
Conglomerate seam, the, 155. 
Connecticut, 97, 264, 312. 
Connellsville, Pa., 295, 354, 422. 
Connellsville Coke & Iron Co., 399. 



Conscription, 189. 

Consolidated Car Construction & 
Repair Shop of Louisville & 
Nashville R. R., 419. 

Constitutional Convention, the. 23, 
25. 

Continental Congress, the. 6. 

Continental Hotel, the, Philadel- 
phia, 59. 

Cook, Judge, 493. 

Cooper, Judge , 150. 

, Mark A., 65. 

, Samuel G., 359, 515. 

Cooper seam, the, 154. 

Co-operative Experimental Coke & 
Iron Co., 258, 259, 261. 

Coosa, xxix. 

Coosa Co., the, 340. 

Coosa County, 75, 90, 224. 

Coosa River, the, Tuskegee on, 7; 
origin of name, 10; boating on, 
92, 153, 185; mentioned, 9, 66, 
78-80, 90, 91, 181, 182, 320. 

Corbin Banking Co., 336. 

Cordova, 54. 

Corinth, 137, 139; fall of, 143; 158; 
evacuation of, 167. 

Cork, Ireland, 101. 

Corliss Engine works, 483, 484. 

Cornwall, England, 184, 310. 

Cornwall Iron works, supplies iron 
to Confederacy, 183, 186; build- 
ing of, 184, 310; account of, 185; 
managed by H. D. Merrill, 199; 
mentioned, 311, 317. 

Cornwallis, surrender of, 22. 

Corona, 502. 

Corona Coal Co., 489, 502. 

Corona mines, 502. 

Corry, Mortimer, 57. 

Cortez, Hernando, defeats the Ala- 

bamas, 8. 
Cost of making iron, quotation from 

Porter report, 301-306. 
Cotton Exposition (New Orleans), 

335. 

Cotton industry, 121, 122. 
Coulter, R., 501, 502. 
Council Bluffs, Iowa, 152. 
Cowan, Tenn., 365, 366, 377, 391. 
Cowan City, 21. 
Cowan furnace, the, 302, 305. 
Cowan junction, 366, 379. 
Cowan, Maj., 21. 
Cowden family, the, 42. 
Coxe, Edward H., 513, 528. 
Crafts, Walter, 288, 324 n., 475 n. 
Cranberry ore mines, the, 302. 
Crane & Breed, firm of, 196. 
Crane Co., the, 341. 
Crane Iron Co., 176, 226, 250. 
Cranford, Jack, 503. 



INDEX 



549 



Craven, Robert, 175. 

Crawford, George Gordon, men- 
tioned, 274; elected president of 
Tennessee Co., 524; sketch of life, 
525-527 ; quoted 527 ; quoted on 
water supply for Tennessee Co., 
530; administration of Tenn. 
Co., 527, 533. 

■ , Geo. C, mentioned, xxxiv, 

527, 529. 

Col. James, 204. 

Crawford administration, 527, 533. 

Crawley, Mrs., ransomed, 13. 

Creeks, the, 3; government treaties 
with, 6; 12, 13, 19, 20, 43; close 
of war with, 52; driven away, 
90. 

Cribbs, Capt. H. H., 64. 
Cripple Creek district, the, 302. 
Crockard, Frank Hearne, 267, 274, 
285, 511, 512, 513, 514, 527, 529. 

, William, 512. 

Crooked Spoon River, Term., 116. 
Crosby indicator, 482. 
Crow, Daniel, 93. 

Crowe, Grattan B., 489, 499, 500. 
Crowe's iron works, 91; destroyed, 
183. 

Croxton, General, 89, 159; destroys 
Knight Brothers factory, 89; de- 
stroys Tannehill furnaces, 159; 
destroys Oxford furnace, 180, 
181. 

Crudup, the, 446. 
Crumpton, O. L., 501. 
Cryder, John, 364. 
Crystal Falls, Mich., 471. 
Cuba, 297, 301. 
Culbertson family, the, 42. 
Cullman County, 504. 
Culloden, battle of, 349. 
Cullom, Edward Northcroft, 138 n., 
321. 

Culverhouse, Thomas C, 457. 
Cumberland Furnace Co., 211. 
Cumberland iron, 286. 
Cumberland Mountains, the, 360, 
362. 

Cumberland Plateau, Term., xxix, 

377, 378, 495. 
Cumberland River, 257. 
Cumberland Valley, 24. 
Cunningham family, the, 42. 
Cunningham & Dixon, 95. 
Cunningham, St. Kevin St. Michael, 

quoted, 113, 216, 223, 245, 250, 

251. 

Curry, , 82, 86. 

, James A., partner in Salt 

Creek Iron Works, 178; in part- 
nership with Samuel Clabaugh, 
476 n. 



Curry, Hon. Jabez L. M., 137. 
Curry & Groce, 88. 
Curtis, Robert M., 419. 
Cushing, Thomas H., 16. 

Dahlonega, Ga., 110. 
Dailey Creek Basin, 150, 334. 
Daileys Creek, 73, 150. 
Dakota, 491. 
Dallas, 119. 

Dallas County, 155, 170, 270. 

Dallas Iron Works, 135. 

Dallinger, S., 404. 

Dalton, 206. 

Dana, Professor, 101. 

Danner, Capt. A. C, quoted, 139, 
212-214, 276, 279-280; men- 
tioned, 276, 474, 478. 

Darlington, 32, 385. 

, England, 386. 

Dauphin County, Pa., 125. 

Davidson County, 249. 

Davis, 493. 

Davis, Benjamin B., 155, 156. 

, George A., 497. 

, James, 54. 

, Jefferson, appoints Gen. 

Gorgas, 127 ; sends Capt. Semmes 
north, 129; quoted, 133; sends 
Colin McRae abroad, 140; home 
of, at Brierfield, Miss., 169; 
mentioned, 234 n. 

Davis & Victor property, 496. 

Davis Creek Coal Co., 500. 

Davis mines, 503. 

Day's Gap mines, 503. 

Deaf and Dumb Society of Hartford, 
44. 

DeBardeleben, Alice, 285, 472. 

, Captain, 239. 

, Ellen Pratt, 295. 

, Henry, 240. 

, Col. Henry Fairchild, acquires 

Champion mine, 23; associated 
with Joseph Squire, 156; enters 
Birmingham District, 238; biog- 
raphy of, 239-242; failure of, 
253 ; acquires Oxmoor, 261 ; takes 
up prospecting, 266; partner- 
ship with Aldrich and Sloss, 273; 
develops Pratt Coal and Coke 
Co., 275-276; assists in first 
million dollar deal, 290 ; partner- 
ship with Underwood, 306-307; 
organizes DeBardeleben Coal and 
Iron Co., 330-333 ; his spirit, 343 ; 
quoted, 163, 239, 240, 242, 266, 
274, 281, 333-334, 335, 339, 343; 
cited, 230, 300; mentioned, xxx, 
21, 22, 25, 153, 210, 250, 256, 257, 
263, 274, 280, 284, 285, 287, 288, 
291, 292, 293, 295, 296, 298, 336, 



550 



INDEX 



339, 340, 341, 344, 346, 353, 417, 

423, 424, 425, 427, 451, 456, 472, 

490, 529 n. 
DeBardeleben, Mrs. H. F., xxiv. 

, Mary Pratt, 306. 

DeBardeleben and Underwood, 306, 

307. 

DeBardeleben Coal & Iron Co., 
261 n., 292, 334, 336, 337, 338, 
342, 400, 423, 425, 440, 448, 456, 
498; organized, 332; reorgan- 
ized, 339. 

DeBows, , quoted, 105, 122. _ 

Decatur, State bank at, 37; termi- 
nus of railroads, 36, 37, 107, 113, 
118, 206, 217; mentioned, 182, 
243, 245, 249, 260, 272, 324, 413, 
417, 419, 503. 

Decatur and Tuscumbia Railroad, 
first railroad of Alabama, 36, 37; 
put through by David Hubbard, 
106; mentioned, 111, 247. 

Decatur Iron Bridge & Construc- 
tion Co., 419. 

Decatur Land Improvement & 
Furnace Co., 419. 

Decatur Mineral & Land Co., 
419. 

De Kalb County, 235, 320. 

De la Roche family, the, 35. 

Delaware, 237. 

Delaware River, the, 59. 

Demopolis, 53, 147. 

Dennis, John H., 101. 

Denson, W. C, 329. 

Denton, W. B., 447. 

Department of Archives and History 

of Alabama, xxiv. 
De Soto, xxviii, 4, 10; meets Tus- 

kaloosa, 18. 
"Devil's race," 93. 
Devonshire, Eng., 14. 
Dewart, Hugh, 468, 513. 
Diamond mines, Pa., 292. 
Dickson, Joseph B., 468. 
Dimmick, Fred, 442, 443. 

, J. K., 441, 442. 

, Capt. Joseph W., 317, 417. 

Dimmick Pipe Co., 441, 442. 
Ditton's Landing, 45. 
Dixon County, Tenn., 211. 
Doan, William L., quoted, 282. 

Dobbins, , 30. 

Dodd seam, the, 154. 
Dolomite, first quarried, 199. 
Dolomite holdings, 532. 
Donelson, 371. 
Doomsday Book, the, 152. 
Dora, 55, 352, 500. 
Dora mines, 493. 
Doud, Major Edward, 379, 417. 
Douglas, Stephen A., 113. 



Douglass, William, 324. 

Douthit, G. B., 92. 

Dover furnace, 256, 257. 

Dow, Lorenzo, 16. 

Dowlais, Wales, 174. 

Dowling, John, 263, 288, 324 n., 
336, 424; biography of, 338-339. 

Downing, Lewis, 92. 

" Druid City," the, 58 

Dublin, Ireland, 237. 

Du Bose, Joel C, quoted, 52, 501. 

, J. W., quoted, 228, 244, 254, 

345; mentioned, 107 n. 

Duck River Country, 26. 

Dudley Grammar School (Bir- 
mingham, Eng.), 355. 

Dudley properties, the, 297. 

Dudley Station, 478. 

Duffee, Mary Gordon, quoted, 40 n., 
43, 64, 98, 167, 199, 201, 209, 
242 295 

Duke,' J. B., 359, 509, 515. 

"Duke of Birmingham," 233. 

Duluth, 469. 

Duluth Co., 527. 

Dummy Line R. R., 229, 335, 
337. 

Duncan, A. J., 529. 

, A. T., 374. 

, John W., 319. 

, W. B., 45. 

, W. M., 360, 361, 391, 396, 420, 

423. 

Dunn,' E. J., 501, 502. 

, Thomas, 501, 502. 

, William, 53. 

Dupont, Mr., 284, 306, 331 
Dupuy, John M., 44. 
Duquesne, 486. 
Durfee, Joseph A., 449. 

Durrah, , 40 n. 

Dutch coal pits, the, 154. 

Eagle forge, the, 82, 86, 201. 
Earle, Baylis W., 45. 

, P. H, 45. 

, Samuel S., 45. 

Earle Place, 44. 

East Birminghm Land Co., 228. 
East End Land and Improvement 

Co., 340, 342. 
East Fork, 366. 
East Lake, 531. 
East Liberty, Pa., 404. 
East Tennessee Iron Co., 175. 
East Tennessee, Virginia & Georgia 

R. R., 297. 
Eastern Texas R. R., 325. 
Ebenezer station, 190. 
Eddysville, Ky., 66. 
Edgar Thomson steel works, 525, 

526. 



INDEX 



551 



Edgefield, So. Carolina, 55. 
Edict of Nantes, 34. 
Edinburgh, Scotland, 500. 
Edmonds, Richard H., quoted, 

318, 350, 521; mentioned, 473, 

474. 

Edmondson, William J., quoted, 
180. 

Edwards, Giles, associated with 
T. S. Alvis, 137; old home of, 
159; biography of, 173-177, 229- 
231; builds new Bibb plant, 204; 
builds furnace at Woodstock, 230 ; 
quoted, 229; mentioned, 212, 292, 
296, 353, 456, 458. 

, Jonathan, 90, 312. 

, Lydia, 458. 

, Reuben, 456. 

, R. K., 173. 

, Mrs. Salinah Evans, wife of 

Giles Edwards, 173 n., 230; 

quoted, 229. 
' Edwards furnace, at Woodstock, 

197, 306. 
Einstein, Henry L., 478. 

, William, 478. 

Eliza furnaces (Pittsburg), 300. 

Ellen, Henry, 505. 

Ellicott's Survey, 12. 

Elliott, Capt. James M., 66, 310, 

319; biography of, 320. 
, Capt. James M., Jr., quoted, 

66; mentioned, 319; biography 

of, 320. 

, Mrs. R. H., nee Charlotte 

Barnwell, 338. 

, Major R. H., 336, 498; biog- 
raphy of, 337-338. 

, Stephen, bishop, 338. 

Elliott Car Works Co., 320. 

Elliott family, the, 338. 

Elliott Pig Iron Co., 320. 

Ellis, an early negro blacksmith, 
15. 

, G. W, 342. 

Elmore County, 7, 162. 

Elmore, J. T., 217. 

"Elms," the, 292. 

Ely, "Captain" William, 44. _ 

Elyton, beginnings of, 41 ; incor- 
porated, 44; early settlers, 44, 
45 ; discovery of ore at, 106 ; im- 
portance of, 113; mentioned, 43, 
51, 115, 118, 168, 190, 197, 202, 
212, 216, 217, 219, 220, 222, 224, 
225, 231, 249. 

Elyton Land Co., mentioned, 199, 
204, 221 n., 226, 228, 229, 233, 
234, 236, 250, 258, 284, 306, 335, 
342, 416; incorporation of, 221, 
222 ; struck by cholera, 254 ; de- 
velopment of, 278; participation 



in great Birmingham boom, 344- 
345. 

Embreeville, Tenn., 485, 486. 
Embreeville Iron Co., 485. 
Emory and Henry College, Va., 320. 
Empire blast furnace, 210, 286. 
Empire Coal Co., 227, 228, 489, 503, 

504, 505. 
Empire Coal & Coke Co., 503. 
Empire Furnace Co., 286. 
Empire Iron Mining Co., 470. 
Emuckfau, 21. 

Engineering and Mining Journal, 
the, 253, 428. 

England, xxviii, 301. 

Englands, the, 92. 

English Cannel Coal, 212. 

English iron, used in Alabama, 3. 

Enslen, Charles, 341. 

, Christian F., 147, 341, 408. 

, Eugene F., 148, 341. 

Ensley, mentioned, xxix, 64 n., 168, 
264, 355, 411, 412, 466, 470, 508, 
514, 520; founding of, 395, 443, 
446; Crawford on water supply 
of, 530. 

Ensley, Col. Enoch, 32, 33, 210, 284, 
298, 306, 331, 339, 340, 341, 342, 
352, 360, 384, 391, 394, 397, 398, 
411, 412, 413, 415, 450, 451, 457, 
478, 490, 496, 501, 514, 529; 
makes first million dollar deal, 
289-290; biography of, 290-292; 
his energy, 293; his character, 
294; negotiations with T. T. 
Hillman, 361-362; founds Ens- 
ley, 395. 

, Hattie, 291. 

, Lady, 291. 

, Laura, 292. 

Ensley Land Co., 395, 397. 

Ensley Manufacturing Co., 294. 

Ensley plant, 515, 530. 

Ensley Steel Mills, 472. 

Ericsson, John, 142. 

Erskine, Janet, 401. 

Erwin, C. M., 341. 

, Col. , 171. 

Estelle Mining Co., 446. 

Etna, 314. 

Etomba-Igaby, see Tombigbee. 
Etowah County, 308, 309, 319, 320, 

443, 444 n. 
Eufaula, 238. _ 

Eufaula, Chief, last speech of, 
47. 

Eureka Co., 456. 

Eureka furnace, 336. 

Eureka Furnace Co., 425. 

Eureka Mining Co., mentioned, 22, 

200, 238, 287, 288, 306, 339; 

closed down, 253. 



552 



INDEX 



Eureka Mining & Transportation 
Co., extraordinary privileges of, 
255 ; charter changed, 262 ; men- 
tioned, 257, 258, 261, 266, 
273. 

Eusting division, 490. 

Eutaw Springs, battle of, 45. 

Evans, Salinan, wife of Giles Ed- 
wards, 174. 

, Sallie H., 407. 

Ewing, Henry, 210. 

Excelsior Coal Co., the, 150, 297, 
450. 

Excelsior Mining Co., 425. 
Exchange Hotel, the, 244. 
Export Coal Co., 297; business of, 
298. 

Exum, Culpepper, 501. 

Fains Creek, 87. 
Fain's Creek forge, 82. 
Fair, Senator (of California), 207, 
325. 

Fairbanks, Major George R., 367 n. 
Fairchild, Miss, wife of Henry De- 

Bardeleben, 240. 
Fairfax, Lieut. — — , 142. 

, Lord (fourth), 268. 

Fairhaven furnace, 256. 
Fall River, Mass., 307. 
Fallis, D. B., 261. 

Fancher, , 71. 

, P. M., 150. 

, Pleasant, 73. 

Fancher coalpits, the, 153. 
Fanchers, the, 23, 70. 
Farragut, Admiral, 145. 
"Farragut's Life and Reports," 

quoted, 145 n. 
Farrand, Commodore, 142. 
Farrar, Seraphine, 43. 

, Thomas W., 43, 44. 

Fayette County, 34, 97, 236, 489, 

502. 

Fayetteville, N. C, 128. 

, Tenn., 23, 30. 

Federal Steel Co., 469, 520. 

Fell, Charles Albert, 147. 

, Richard, mentioned, 66, 147, 

170, 257. 

, Richard, Jr., 147. 

Ferguson, Thomas K., in Oxford 

Iron Co., 180. 
Ferry, Peter, 263. 

"Field of the Black Warrior," 273. 
"Fiery Gizzard, The," 376, 377, 
379. 

Fifth Alabama Infantry, 148. 

Figh, George M., 155. 

Fink, Albert, mentioned, 139, 245, 

247, 248, 249, 251, 252, 260, 277, 

278. 



Finley, Hugh, 25. 

First National Bank at Bellaire, 
Ohio, 510. 

First National Bank of Birming- 
ham, 447, 448, 490 n. 

First National Bank, Nashville, 
383. 

First National Coal and Iron Land 
Co., 342. 

Fitch, Frank, quoted, 73, 74, 76, 
151, 173; biography of, 325. 

, Mrs. Frank, quoted, 73, 

75. 

Fite, L. B., 374, 529. 
Five-Mile Creek, 51. 
Flat Creek, 490. 

Fleming, Walter L., quoted, 131, 
144, 186. 

Fletcher, John, 430. 

Flint Ridge holdings, 532. 

Florence, furnaces at, 33; men- 
tioned, 36, 37, 96, 108, 324, 352, 
413, 417, 418, 457. 

Florence Land, Mining & Manu- 
facturing Co., 417. 

Florence, Italy, 251. 

Florence mine, Florence, Wis., 
471. 

Florida, mentioned, xxviii, 73, 123, 
189, 265. 

Fontaine, William, 290. 

Forbes, John Murray, 68 n. 

, Thomas S., 171 n. 

Forcett Limestone Co., 387. 

Forcett Railway Co., 387. 

Ford, John, 424. 

Forker, D. M., 356, 449. 

Forrest, Gen. Nathan Bedford, son of 
William, 26; in defense of Selma, 
188-194; quoted, 189, 190; men- 
tioned, 57, 158, 167, 172, 173, 
201, 370, 383. 

, William B., 25. 

Forrest Academy, 308. 

Forsyth, A. R., 445. 

Fort Confederacion, 9. 

Fort Jackson, 19, 162. 

Fort Jonesboro, 41, 42, 333, 334, 
471. See also Bessemer. 

Fort Payne, 321. 

Fort St. _ Stephens, government 
blacksmith shop at, 3; location, 
5; government trading post at, 
12, 14; moved to Mt. Vernon, 16; 
19. See also St. Stephens. 

Fort Stoddard, 16. 

Fort Strother, 182. 

Fort Toulouse, built by Bienville, 
7 ; name changed, 19, 162. 

Fort Wayne, Indiana, 319. 

Fossick, T. L., 28, 29. 

Fossil group, 472. 



INDEX 



553 



Foundation for the Promotion of 

Industrial Peace, 480. 
Four Mile Creek, 173. 
Fourth National Bank of Nashville, 

Tenn., 529. 
France, 386, 387. 

Frankford Arsenal, Philadelphia, 
126. 

Franklin, Ben, 36. 

Franklin, battle of, 383. 

Franklin County, settled by Maj. 
Russell, 21; first blast furnace in 
Alabama in, 27; character of ore 
in, 28, 29; plague in, 30; early 
settlers in, 34; mentioned, 36, 
40, 98, 352, 365, 373, 412, 413, 
414. 

Franklin Mining Co., 451, 457. 

Fredericksburg, battle of, 300. 

Freedman's Bureau, the, 296. 

Freeman, H. S., 419. 

Freeman's Battery of Artillery, 383. 

French, G. Watson, 359, 515. 

French, the, xxvii. 

Frey, Andrew Calhoun, 419. 

Frick, Henry Clay, 376, 400, 403, 
404, 517, 518. 

Frictionless Metal Co. of Chatta- 
nooga, 445. 

Friel, T. H., 412, 501. 

Frierson, Gideon, 55. 

, George, 55. 

, Joe, 55. 

Friley, Caleb, 40. 

Frisco R. R., Ga., 496, 499, 500, 

502, 503, 504. 
"Frisco System," 229, 352. 
Fritz, John, 175, 355. 
Fuller, Bob, 159. 

Fulton blast furnace, 210, 211, 257, 
285. 

Furnace Hill, Anniston, 179. 

Gadsden, mentioned, xxix, 66, 
90 n., 109, 235, 310, 319, 320, 
323, 324, 413, 451. 

Gadsden Furnace Co., 319. 

Gadsden Iron Co., 319. 

Gadsden Land and Improvement 
Co., 319. 

Gadsden properties, 473, 479. 

Gainer, 150. 

Gaines, George Shipp, quoted, 56. 

, George Strother, 3, 204, 501. 

, Mrs. George Strother, 13. 

, James L., 420. 

Gaines, the gunboat, 145. 
Gallagher, James, 501. 
Gallatin, Tenn., 374. 
Galloway, Robert, 489, 497, 498. 
Galloway Coal Co., 74, 228, 489, 
497, 498, 499, 500, 505. 



Gait House, Louisville, Ky., 248. 
Gamble, Franklin Asbury, 22, 501. 

, John R., 21, 22. 

, Judge, 324 n. 

, Leila, 324 n. 

, Robert, 22. 

Gamble mines, 493. 

Gamble Mines Co., 489, 496. 

Garland, Dr. L. C, 51. 

Garnsey, Cyrus, Jr., 489, 497, 499. 

Garnsey, mines of, 74, 326, 500. 

Garrett, William, quoted, 55, 105; 

mentioned, 1-25 n. 
Garrigus, David, 82, 84, 86, 87. 

, Silas, 82, 84. 

Garth, H. E., 476. 

Gary, E. H., 517. 

Gary plant, 523. 

Gas Light mines, 503. 

Gate City, xxix, 167, 356, 410, 

449. 

Gate City properties, 473. 
Gates, John W., 357, 359, 509, 515. 
"Gates Syndicate," the, 359. 
Gay, Simon, 145. 

Gayle, Amelia, wife of General 

Gorgas, 216. 

, Gov. John, 37, 125, 126. 

, Mary, wife of Gen. Aiken, 

126. 

Gaylord Iron & Pipe Co., 442. 

Geddery, , 408. 

Geismer, H. F., 449. 
Georges Mill, 74. 

Georgia, Moses Stroup and iron 
making in, 64-66; J. N. Smith a 
native of, 73; Robt. Thomas 
early furnaceman of, 75; iron 
compared with Alabama iron, 
80; first iron works in, built by 
J. Stroup, 91, 163; comparison 
with Alabama capital, 122 ; Con- 
federate laboratory in, 130, 166; 
mentioned, xxviii, 7, 57, 63, 74, 
78, 83, 89, 93, 97, 106, 110, 111, 
116, 117, 123, 136, 139, 184, 
221 n., 263, 288, 302, 305, 311, 
324, 328, 334, 336, 408, 414. 

Georgia Company, the, 111. 

Georgia Institute of Technology, 
525 

Georgia Pacific R. R., 342, 347, 
348, 350, 437, 438, 440, 454, 
502. 

Georgia Society, the, 107 n., 113 n., 
162 n. 

Georgia State Road, the, 114, 116. 
Georgia Western R. R., 337. 
Germania Savings Bank & Trust 

Co., New Orleans, 449. 
Germanna, 453 n. 
Germany, 264, 387, 527. 



554 



INDEX 



Geronimo, held captive at Mt. Ver- 
non, 18. 

Gessler, G. A., 515. 

Gettysburg, battle of, 26, 300. 

Gholson, , 150. 

Gholson seam, the, 150. 

Gibbs, Dr., 101. 

Gibson, H. P., 501. 

, Jacob, 54. 

, Professor, 444. 

Gilchrist, Percy, 410. 

Giles, 160. 

Gillespie, , 30. 

Gillespy, James McAdory, 44; 
quoted, 158, 159. 

, John Sharp, 44. 

Gilmer, Col. Frank, first purchaser 
of Red Mountain land, 46; pro- 
motes railways, 104, 121, 123; 
biography, 106, 107; starts Ox- 
moor plant, 124; founds Red 
Mountain Iron & Coal Co., 161, 
162; aids South & North R. R., 
215, 216, 217, 244, 247, 249; 
mentioned, 110, 139, 164, 202, 
203, 211, 218, 220, 223, 525. 

, George N., 241, 255. 

, J. N., 222. 

, William B., helps start Ox- 
moor plant, 123, 124; president 
Red Mountain Iron & Coal Co., 
155, 162, 164, 202. 

Gilreath, Belton, 501. 

Ginevan, Tim, 263. 

Girault, Maj. J. F., 133. 

Giudrat & Co., 99. 

Gladstone Lodge, Sons of St. 
George, 324. 

Glasgow, Scotland, 68. 

Glass, Adam, 501. 

Glen Carbon, 328. 

Glidden, Charles C, 300. 

, John S., cited, 3, 6; biog- 
raphy, 14-16; mentioned, 21, 22, 
137. 

, Stephen S., 474, 476 n. 

Globe Coal Co., 493. 

Glover, , 204. 

Goadby, W. H., 453. 

Goethite mines, opened by Daniel 
Hillman, 61; mentioned, 64, 159, 
160, 356. 

Goethite commissary, 159. 

Goettingen. See University. 

Gogebic ore range, 468. 

Goochland County, Va., 308. 

Goodapple, John H., 443. 

Goode, Noah P., clerk for Jacob 
Stroup, 65; helps start Cane 
Creek Iron Works, 75, 91; ad- 
vertisement of, 95. 

Goodin, Mark, 40 n. 



Goodman, Walter M., 165. 
Goodrich, Casting, 60. 

, Justus Buck, 60. 

, Levin S., biography of, 256, 

257; mentioned, 60, 164, 259, 

261,_ 262. 

Goodrich's Blast Furnace Feeder, 
259. 

Goold, William L., prospecting for 
Col. Ensley, 32; biography, 68; 
manager for Alabama Coal Co., 
69; becomes cotton broker, 69; 
first coke maker in Alabama, 
144; Helena mines managed by, 
150; association with Joseph 
Squire, 151-153; resumes coal 
business, 260; mentioned, 267, 
273, 274, 292, 412, 440. 

Goold's Coal mines, 124, 150. 

Goold seam, the, 260. 

Gordon, Douglass H., 474, 480. 

, Eugene, 266. 

, E. C, 414. 

, Fred, 411. 

, F. F., 331. 

, Gen. John B., raises company, 

183. 

, Walter S., 413, 414. 

Gorgas, Gen. Josiah, chief of ord- 
nance of Confederacy, 17, 124- 
137, 166; reconstruction of Brier- 
field, 204-207; retirement and 
death, 207, 208; mentioned, 184, 
324. 

, Mrs. Josiah, 125 n., 208. 

, William Crawford, 126. 

Goyne, Harrison W., 45. 

Grace, Baylis Earle, quoted, 41, 
42, 44, 61, 209; biography of, 
45, 46; cited, 48, 224; men- 
tioned, 50, 73, 161, 202, 210, 212, 
219, 472. 

, Mrs. Baylis, quoted, 42; 

mentioned, 353. 

, Rev. F. M., quoted, 50, 172 n. 

, Joseph, 45. 

Grace's Gap, mentioned, 46, 50, 
113, 124, 161, 209, 261, 307. 

Grady, Henry W., 311, 315. 

Graham, A. W., 341. 

Grant, Gen. Ulysses S., 125, 318, 
382. 

Granville, Ohio, 317. 
Graves, 446. 
Gravlee, William, 54. 

, W. G., 501. 

Gray, Judge George, 237. 

, J. M., 505. 

Gray Ore Iron Co., 480. 
Great Britain, 114, 116. 
Great Elk Co., 497, 500, 501. 
Great Elk mines, 503. 



INDEX 



555 



Great Smoky Range. 26. 
Greater Birmingham, xxix, xxxii, 
237. 

Greeley furnace, 33S. 

Green, William A., biography of, 

359 ; mentioned, 511, 513. 
Green family, the, 48. 
Green Springs, 471. 
Greene County, 448. 
Greene County, N. Y., 139. 
Greene, Robert N., 222. 
Greene-Wheelock Engine Works, 

4S3, 484. 
Greenpond, 307. 
Greensboro, 169. 
Greensport, 1S2. 
Greenup County, Ky., 256. 
Greenupburg, Ky., 60, 211. 
Greenville, Miss., 454. 
Greenville District, So. Carolina, 

40 n. 

Grenfell. C. A.. 447. 
Griffin, Gen. Daniel, 111. 

, William, 1S1. 

Grindle, James, 50. 

Grissom, Viney, 440. 

Griswold, Mr., 409. 

Grundv Countv, Tenn., 363, 365, 

375, 495. 
Gude. W. L.. 291. 
Gulf Coke & Coal Co., 491. 
Gulf of Mexico, mentioned, xxviii, 

113 n, 114, 118, 151, 213, 245. 
Gulf Plains, xxix. 
Gunnels. D. P., 179. 
Gunter's Landing, 51. 
Guntersville. 118, 119. 
Gurgainus. John, Sr., 54, 57. 
Gurnee, 297, 424, 450. 
Gurnee Junction, 297. 
Gurnee Slope, the, 150. 
Gurnee. W. J., 450. 
, W. S., 295, 463, 464, 465, 

476. 

Guthrie. B, F., 2SS, 
, Frank, 261. 

. Tracy W., 46, 358, 359, 

511. 

Guttery, Robert, 57. 

H. C. Feick Coke Co., 376, 399, 
404. 

Haas, Sol, 352, 452. 
Habersham County, Ga., 65, 91. 
Hagood's crossroads, 48. 
Halbert, Henry S., quoted, 10. 
Hale, Dayton, quoted, 97. 

, Harrison, biography, 97, 98, 

165. 

. M. A,, quoted, 97, 158. 

, Senator, 98. 

, Thomas, 98. 



Hale & Murdock furnace, 97, 158. 
Hale & Murdock Iron Works, 158, 
1S6. 

Hall, Maj. Boiling, mentioned, 222, 

244, 247-249. 

, James, 44. 

, Stephen, 44. 

Hallfield Iron Works, Eng., 355. 

Hallo well, , 50. 

Hamilton, John, 27. 

, Miss Liza Ann, 28; quoted, 

31. 

, Peter J., quoted, 6, 8, 14, 16, 

19, 38. 

, Robert, 528. 

Hamilton Creek Ore Co., 451, 457. 

Hamlet, Samuel L., 72. 

Hammond, Governor, 102. 

Hampden County, Mass., 170. 

Hampton, E. L., 493, 495, 496. 

Hampton properties, 495. 

Hanbury, A. A., 67. 

Hanbv, David, mentioned, 48, 50, 
199^ 451. 

, Capt. Felix, 57. 

, Gabriel, 23, 40 n. 

, John, 21 ; biography of, 22, 

23 ; 40 n., 48. 

, John David, Supt. of Gloss- 
Sheffield mines, 23, 198; quoted, 
294; mentioned, 262, 294, 458. 

, W. F., father of John David, 

199. 

Hanby's Mills, 48, 164. 
Hancock County, 56. 
Hancock. James, 54. 
Handley, W. A., 342. 
Hand v," Charles L., 341. 

. Sarah E,. 101. 

Hanging Rock, Ohio, 60. 
Hanna, Leonard C, 359, 509, 515. 
Hannon, E. C, 217, 244. 
Hanover National Bank, 447. 
Haralson, Jonathan, 135. 
Hardie, J. T., 341, 342. 

, William, 342. 

Hardin County, 382. 
Harding. Horace, 448. 

, W. P. G., 290, 447, 448. 

Hardman County, Tenn., 40 n. 
Hardy, John, quoted, 135. 
Hargreaves, Harry, 284, 386; biog- 
raphy of, 288-289. 
Hargrove, 452. 
Hargrove m in es, 326. 
Hargrove, Rev. R. K., 52. 
Harper's Ferry, 126. 
Harriman, E. H., 515, 523. 
Harriman roads, 515. 
Harris, G. H., 299. 

, Mary, 77. 

, R. B., 217. 



556 



INDEX 



Harrison, Hon. Joseph D., 235. 

, Viola, wife of W. B. Roden, 

235. 

Harrow, Eng., 288. 
"Harry Lorrequer," 108, 348. 
Hartford, Conn., 44, 80. 
Hartford, the, 145 n. 
Harvard University, 101. 
Hassinger, Jacob, 449. 

, W. H., 356, 357, 408, 410, 447, 

449, 450, 451. 
Hattie Ensley furnace, the, 352. 
Havana, 126. 

Hawkins, Col. Benjamin, sends 
blacksmiths to Mississippi Ter- 
ritory, 2, 3; fosters agriculture 
and iron industry, 6; biography, 
6, 7; mentioned, 454. 

, James, 42. 

, Williamson, 42, 354. * 

Hawkins family, the, 42. 

Hawkins plantation, the, 353. 

Hawkinsville, Ga., 7. 

Hayes, J. J., 501. 

Hazelhurst, George, 110. 

Healey, Gen. R. W., 317. 

Hearne, Frank, 267, 512. _ 

Heidelberg, 525. See University. 

Helena, Billy Goold's mines near, 69 ; 
rolling mill at, 137, 147; mines 
of Monk, Edwards & Co. at, 150; 
coal fields of, 429; mentioned, 
151, 197, : 199, 252, 260, 267, 
297. 

Helena Coal Co., 340. 

Helena coal mines, mentioned, 150, 

164, 242, 260, 267, 271, 292, 

294. 

Helena Rolling Mill, 186. 
Helena seam, the, 155. 
Helen Bess mine, the, 167. 
Hematite, 83, 97, 206. 
Hemphill, W. A., 414. 
Henderson, B. R., 497. 

, James, 175, 176, 407. 

Henderson Co., 407, 408. 
Henderson Coal Co., 500. 
Henderson Steel & Manufacturing 

Co., 408. 
Hendon, T. S., 501. 
Henley, John W., 45. 
, Robert H., first mayor of 

Birmingham, 232, 233. 
Henry Ellen Co., 425. 
Henry Ellen Coal Mines, 295, 300, 

307, 338, 339, 424. 

Herndon, , 150. 

Hershey, M. L., 341. 

Heslip, Joseph, 27, 28, 30. 

Hesse-Cassel, 239. 

Hewell's Mines, 68. 

Hewitt, Abram S., quoted, 232, 



301 ; mentioned, 473, 474, 475 n., 

476, 521. 
Hewitt, G. W., 45. 

, Capt. James W., 48. 

Hewitt family, the, 48. 

Hewlett, William Henry, 385. 

Hickman County, Tenn., 40 n. 

Hickman, Ky., 246. 

Hickman, Richard S., 64 n., 168. 

Hicks, E. D., 210. 

Hicks & Loyd, 93. 

High Soapstone Bluff, see Moore's 

Bluff. 

Highland Rim, the, xxix, 329, 412, 
419. 

Hill, Gen. , 180. 

— , Napoleon, 290. 

Hill Country, xxviii, xxix, xxxiv, 

217, 247, 251. 
Hill steel properties, 522. 
Hillabee Indians, see Ollabee Indians. 
Hillabee Gold Mining Co., 452. 
Hillhouse, James, Sr., 440, 505. 
Hillman, 490 n. 
Hillman, Charles, 59, 287. 
, Daniel, biography, 58, 59, 60, 

61; mentioned, 147, 164, 256, 

285, 490 n. 
, Daniel, Jr., mentioned, 210, 

211, 212, 256, 257, 285, 286, 287, 

437. 

, George, 59, 60, 257. 

, James, brother of Daniel, 59, 

147. 

, James, son of Daniel, 59. 

, Jane, 60. 

, Thomas Tennessee, son of 

Daniel, Jr., 61, 211, 284, 285, 
294, 298, 305, 306, 331, 341, 360, 
391, 394, 396, 399, 400, 411, 423, 
466, 474, 478, 484, 489, 490, 492, 
496; biography of, 285-287; 
negotiations with Col. Ensley, 
361-362. 

Hillman and Son, D., 287. 

Hillman boiler plate, 286. 

Hillman Coal and Iron Co., 287. 

Hillman Hospital, Birmingham, 
490 n. 

Hillman Hotel Co., 236. 

Hills bloomery, the, 70. 

Hillside Cemetery (Anniston), 315. 

Hinds, Joseph Monroe, 419. 

Hinds County, Miss., 151, 172. 

"History of Alabama" (Miller), 182. 

"History of Blount County " (Pow- 
ell), 40. 

Hoadley, Joseph, 297. 

, Joseph H., 481 ; sketch of life, 

482, 483, 484. 

Hoadley engine, 482. 

Hobbs, Maj. T. H., 107. 



INDEX 



557 



Hobuckintopa, bluff, 9 ; fortified by 

Spanish, 12; 14, 19. 
Hokendauqua, Pa., 353, 354. 
Hollidaysburg, Pa., 84. 
Hollingsworth, W. P., 319. 
Holly, Mr., 409. 

Holly Springs, Miss., iron works at, 
129, 143, 165; first gun of Con- 
federacy made at, 166; raided by 
Federal troops, 167; mentioned, 
164, 318. 

Holmes, Professor, 102. 

Holt, 429. 

Holyhead, 331. 

Homestead, Pa., 400. 

Homestead Works, 526. 

Hood, Gen. , 138. 

Hooper, J. D., 501. 

Hopkins, E. O., 452. 

Horse Creek, 55. 

Horse Creek Coal & Coke Co., 412. 
Horseshoe Manufactory, 135. 
Hot Springs, Ark., 64 n., 90 n. 
Hotel Hillman, Birmington, 490 n. 
Houston, 356. 

Houston, George S., mentioned, 

104, 107, 119, 245. 

, W., 374. 

Howard, Frank, 371. 

, Margaret Reed, 525. 

Howard College, Marion, 316, 336. 
Howlette, Judge William, 54. 
Hubbard, Maj. David, starts first 

railway in Alabama, 36, 37; 

trustee of University of Alabama, 

38; 106. 

Huckabee, Col. Caswell Campbell, 
164, 169, 324; connection with 
Brierfield mill, 170; quoted, 171; 
Brierfield property confiscated, 
172 n. ; connection with a rail- 
way, 173. 

, Gray, 169. 

Huckabee, Smith & Co., 171. 

Huey, Capt. John M., 149, 194. 

Huey, T. W. & Co., 88. 

Huguenots, 34. 

Hull, George, 431. 

Humes, Milton, 419. 

Humphreys County, Tenn., 256, 
257. 

Hunt, Maj. , 171. 

Hunter, , 82. 

, Samuel, 89. 

■ , William, 203. 

Huntington, , 169. 

Huntsvule, xxix ; Constitutional 

Convention at, 23; bank at, 35; 

canal at, 37; mentioned, 38, 45, 

56, 364 n. 
Huntsville Pike, the, 43, 45, 223. 
Hurricane Mill, 257. 



Illinois, 356, 358, 418, 484. 
Illinois Central R. R., 115, 165, 337. 
Illinois & Mississippi Canal, 251. 
Illinois Steel Co., 359, 403, 469, 

520, 526. 
Independence, Kans., 152. 
Indian Territory, 90, 235. 
Indiana, 252, 319, 326, 356. 
Indianapolis, Ind., 171. 
Indianapolis Monetary Conference, 

480. 

Indians, xxvii; in control of Alabama, 
3 ; customs, 4, 5, 11 ; stirred up by 
Spaniards, 12; fear of massacre 
by, 14, 15; use of iron ore by 
the, 43; final glimpse of, 46, 47; 
90. 

Industrial and Scientific Society, 

479. 
Ingram, R., 92. 

Inman, John H., 341, 361, 383, 

384, 396, 423, 426, 431. 
Inman, Swan & Co., 383. 
Inman, Tenn., 391. 
Internal Improvement Commission, 

the, 105. 

International Association of Metal- 
lurgists and Mineralogists, 407. 

International Geological Congress 
(1884-1889), 265. 

International League of Press clubs, 
Birmingham, xxxi. 

International Mining Congress 
(1901), 265. 

International Power Co., 483, 484. 

International Trust Co. of Balti- 
more, 473, 480. 

Interstate Commerce law, 276. 

Iowa, 152, 296. 

Irondale, 458. 

Irish coal pits, the, 153, 154, 155. 

Iron, in general. See Table of 
Contents. 

"Iron and Steel Association Bulle- 
tin," 145 n. 

Iron Bridge Manufacturing Co., 
340. 

Iron City, 334, 337. 

"Iron in All Ages," 175. 

"Iron Making in Alabama" (Phil- 
lips), quoted, 32. 

Ironaton, 310, 316, 322, 323. 

Ironaton furnaces, 83. 

Irondale furnaces, destruction of, 
194; rebuilt, 195, 197; aban- 
doned, 200; ruins of, 201; 
failure of, 253; mentioned, 11, 
161, 165, 186, 187, 199, 208, 257, 
260. See also Cahaba Iron 
Works. 

Irondale ore miners, 355. 

Irwin, Pa., 402. 



558 



INDEX 



Irwin Gas Coal field, 402. 
Ishcooda group, 471, 472, 473. 
Ishcooda mines, the, 46, 199. 
Ishpeming, Mich., 468. 
Ivens & Sons Steam Engine & 

Iron-working plant, 419. 
Ivy Coal & Iron Co., 412, 489, 493, 

496. 

J. H. Fitts & Co., 448. 

Jacksboro, Tenn., 379. 

Jackson, Andrew, at battle of New 
Orleans, 15 n.; at Fort Tou- 
louse, 19; capture of Weather- 
ford, 19, 20; mentioned, 2, 3, 
7, 14, 21, 24, 26, 38, 40, 52, 71, 
107, 126, 128, 182, 199, 223, 
363. 

, Fred M., 284, 294, 473, 474, 

477, 478, 479; biography of, 293- 
294; quoted, 291. 

• , Col. J. F. B., 124, 237, 250, 

341, 342. 

, Dr. R. D., 293. 

Jackson, Miss., 118. 

Jackson County, blast furnace con- 
structed in, 183; mentioned, 157, 
186, 266. 

Jackson furnace, supplies iron to 
Confederacy, 186. 

Jackson mines, 468. 

Jacksonville, 118, 136, 173, 233. 

Jacobs, W. W., 476. 

James, William, xxxiii. 

James River, 308, 351. 

Janney, Alfred A., 92; starts a 
furnace, 181, 182; furnace de- 
stroyed, 183. 

Janney furnace, constructed dur- 
ing the war, 179, 181 ; destroyed, 
182, 183; mentioned, 186. 

Jany & Co., 99. 

Japan, 318. 

Jasper, 34, 56, 493, 496, 500, 503. 

Jasper Herald, 388. 

Jasper Land Company, 22. 

Jasper road, the old, 354. 

Jeans, J. Stephens, 522. 

Jefferson, Texas, 328. 

Jefferson Coal Co., 252. 

Jefferson Coal & Coke Co., 236. 

Jefferson County, interest of, 40; 
carved out of Blount, 43; first 
seat of justice in, 44; no iron 
making in, before war, 48; small 
iron supply of, 58; Oxmoor fur- 
nace in, 67, 124; first discovery of 
iron ore in, 106; cost of iron in, 
115; coal supplied by, 149; first 
supplies iron, 161, 162; revival 
in, 195, 196; importance of rail- 
road to, 215; court house of, 231, 



232; rise of, 345; mentioned, 35, 
36, 40 n., 42, 45, 50, 51, 61, 62, 
79, 98, 113, 157, 159, 164, 167, 
186, 190, 197, 200, 209, 210, 221, 
222, 236, 237, 244, 261, 270, 295, 
299, 334, 351, 353, 412, 438 n., 
452, 457, 471, 490, 491, 494, 499, 
504. 

Jefferson County, Mo., 380, 491. 
Jefferson County Building & Loan 

Association, 479. 
"Jefferson County Record," 41, 

112, 211 n.; quoted, 396. 
Jefferson County Savings Bank, 

148, 341. 
Jefferson foundry, the, 298, 340. 
Jefferson Iron Works, 512. 
Jefferson seam, 236, 271, 493, 504. 
Jefferson, Thomas, 6. 
Jeffords, C. L., 342. 
Jemison, Robert, 82, 224, 225, 

341. 

Jemison, Powell, Ficklen & Co., 
stage line of, 224; mentioned, 
498. 

Jenifer, 322. 

Jenifer furnace, origin of, 90; ac- 
count of establishment of, 178, 
179; mentioned, 186, 316, 322. 

Jenifer Furnace Co., 316, 322, 476 n. 

Jenifer Iron Co., 476 n. 

Jenkins, F. I., 500. 

, H. S., 500. 

Jessup, Gen. , 17. 

Johns, Llewellyn, xxiv, 32, 284, 
336, 339, 356, 398, 400, 412, 432, 
450, 456; quoted, 331, 343; 
biography of, 292. 

" Johns" mine, the, 292. 

Johnson, Boorman, 364. 

, Guy R., 35, 297, 481, 484, 485, 

486, 487. 

, Tom L., 171. 

Johnson City, Tenn., 486. 

Johnston, A. B., 342, 410. 

, Gen. , 136. 

, Gilbert, 349. 

, H. R., 410. 

, John W., 250, 341, 342, 347, 

348, 452, 459, 501 ; biography of, 
349-350. 

, Hon. Joseph Forney, 140 n, 

200, 341, 342, 347, 348, 

, Mary, daughter of J. W. 

Johnston, 250. 

, W. H., 340, 513. 

Joliet, 486. 

Joliet Steel Co., 359. 

Jones, Andrew T., 177. 

, Dr. Andre w, quoted, 40 n. 

, Capt. Bill, 176, 229, 390. 

, E. F., 445. 



INDEX 



559 



Jones, Commodore Jacob, 440. 

, Jaspar, 53. 

, Jolly, 40 n. 

, John, 40, 40 n. 

, Joseph A., in Oxford Iron Co., 

180. 

, Pink, 53. 

, Rufus, 56. 

■ , Samuel G., railroad operator, 

104, 139; aids Milner, 109, 112; 
quoted, 253. 

, Judge Thomas G., in Gen. 

Gordon's company, 183. 

, Col. T. S., 29. 

, W. A. P., 165. 

, William, 53. 

, William, 386. 

, W. S., 29. 

, Com. Catesby ap R., in com- 
mand of Confederate naval foun- 
dry, 140, 145. 

Jones Bluff, 9. 

Jones Valley, mentioned, 10, 11, 
41, 42, 43, 44, 61, 98, 113, 161, 
199, 209, 212, 219, 220, 221, 225, 
226, 228, 229, 235, 299, 344, 
490 n. 

Jones Valley Times, the, 46. 
Jonesboro, beginnings of, 41, 42, 43; 

mentioned, 62, 98, 149, 194, 224, 

333. 

Jonesboro, Penn., 371. 
Jordan, Fleming, 299. 

, Mrs. Fleming, 45, 299. 

, Margaret, 46. 

, Mortimer H., 45, 254. 

Jordan family, the, 299. 

K. C. M. & B. R. R., 499. 

Kanawha River, the, 279. 

Kansas, 152, 320, 326. 

Kansas City, Mo., 510. 

Kansas City Coal & Coke Co., 498. 

Kansas City, Fort Scott and Mem- 
phis R. R., 338. 

Kansas City, Memphis and Bir- 
mingham R. R., 338, 502, 503. 

Karl Eberhard University, 525. 

Karshish, 251. 

Keiser, Bernhard, 354. 

, F. B., biography of, 354; 

quoted, 356; mentioned, 356, 
357, 449. 

Kelley, C. C, 501. 

Kelley's Springs, 88. 

Kelly, of Texas, 328. 

, William D. ("Pig Iron 

Kelly"), 212. 

Kenan, John R., 155, 177. 

, Mrs. T. G., 18 n. 

Kenan plantation, 189, 192. 

Kendal, 385. 



Kenesaw Mountain, Ga., 116. 

Kennebec, Maine, 126. 

Kennedy, Leslie, discovers coal in 
Tennessee, 363; supposed to 
have first given the name Sewanee 
to coal, 365 ; mine boss, 366. 

Kentucky, mentioned, 40 n., 106, 
147, 210, 211, 256, 257, 285, 286, 
287, 308, 325, 418, 490, 490 n. 

Keokuk, Iowa, 498. 

Ker, Severn P., 358. 

Kettig, William H., biography of, 
341. 

Key, Francis Scott, 126. 
Kimball House, Atlanta, 333. 
Kimberly properties, 236. 
King, John, 501. 
, Peyton, 45. 

, William Rufus, mentioned, 18, 

45, 134, 203. 
King Bill, xxix. 
King David furnace, the, 339. 
King Henry Furnace, the, 339. 
"King John" furnace, the, 292, 

339. 

Kirkwood, David, 501. 

Klapp, Eugenia, 268. 

Knight, Benjamin, 89. 

, H. H., 449. 

7 , Jacob B., 89. 

Knight furnace, erection of, 82; 
mentioned, 178, 186. 

Knowles, Morris, 530. 

, Thankful, 170. 

Knox, W. S., in Central City Foun- 
dry, 135; in Oxford Iron Co., 
179. 

Knoxville, Tenn., 382. 
Kusa or Kusha, see Coosa. 
Kyle, J. C, 342. 

, Col. Robert B., 310; biog- 
raphy of, 319. 

, T. S., 447. 

Kyle Lumber Co., 319, 320. 

La Belle Iron Works, 511. 
Lacey, Ed., 274. 

, Harry, 449. 

, J. D., 445. 

Lacey-Buek Iron Co., 441, 445, 
446. 

Lady Ensley Coal, Iron, & R. R. 

Co., 412, 451, 457. 
Lady Ensley furnace, the, 352. 
Lady Ensley Furnace Co., 415, 

451. 

Lafayette, Marquis de, 145. 
La Grange, Tenn., 498. 
La Hammell family, the, 184. 
Lake Chautauqua, N. Y., 139. 
Lake De Funiak Chautauqua Asso- 
ciation, 348. 



560 



INDEX 



Lake Superior District, 523. 
Lake Superior ore region, 468, 470, 
471. 

Lake Superior steel interests, men- 
tioned, 522. 

Lakeview Park, 229. 

Lamar County, importance of, 40; 
operation in, 96, 97, 98, 157; 
mentioned, 29, 186. 

Lamochattee, surrender of, 19. 

Lancashire, England, 152. 

Lancaster, Brown, & Co., 454. 

Lang, John, 497. 

Lanston Monotype Machine Co., 
455. 

Lapsley, James W., 177, 476. 

, John W., 104, 177. 

-, Judge, 176. 

Larimer, Pa., 401. 

Larimer Coke Works, 402. 

Larkin, A. H., 453. 

Lathrop, A. M., 72. 

Lauderdale County, 40, 46, 98, 413, 

417, 418. 
Lawrence, Amos E., quoted, 143. 
Lawrence County, 413. 
Lawton, Major A. S., 418. 
Lay, Captain, W. P., quoted, 90 n., 

93. 

Leach & Avery foundry, the, 158. 
Leake, T. C, 501, 502. 

, W. E., 500, 501. 

Leath, B. D., 497. 
Leavenworth, Kans., 152. 
Lebanon, Pa., 411. 

, Tenn., 236. 

Lebanon Law School, 291. 
Ledbetter, Col. Daniel, 187. 
Ledyard, Lewis Cass, 516, 517. 
Lee, Gen. Robert E., surrender of, 
180. 

Lee family, the, 308. 
Leeds, P. L., 410. 

Legislature of Alabama, addressed 
by Chief Eufaula, 47; Milner's 
report on railroads, 113-119, 121; 
acts of, 100, 104, 105, 108; men- 
tioned, 112. 

Lehman, Mr., 411. 

Lehmann brothers, 476. 

Lernier, Capt. , 187. 

Leslie, , 71. 

Lever, Charles, 108. 

Lewis, B. B., 147. 

, Major E. C, 371, 375. 

, Ned, 181, 182. . 

Lewisburg, 500. 

Lewisburg mines, 479. 

Lexington, 440. 

Lighten, Samuel H., 299. 

Lighton foundry, the, 340. 

Limestone, 34, 107. 



Lime Station, 206. 

Limestone County, 26, 107, 108, 

123,348. 
Limonite, 28. 
Lincoln, Abraham, 311. 
Lincoln County, N. C, 64, 349. 
Lincoln Hospital, 203. 
Lincolnton, N. C, 136. 
Linder, N. B., 89. 

Lindsay, Gov. , 233. 

Lindsey, •, 74. 

Linn, Charles, biography of, 227, 

228; mentioned, 200, 259, 299. 

, Edward W., 228, 342. 

Linn Iron works, 200, 228, 285, 299, 

339, 406, 407, 425; consolidated 

with Pratt Coal & Coke Co., 291, 

361. 

Linn mines, the, 306. 

"Linn's Folly," 227, 299, 341. 

Lint, H. A., 356, 422. 

Linzey's, the, 23. 

"Little Alice," 287, 293, 339. 

Little Belle Furnace Co., 336, 425. 

"Little Birminghams," 344. 

Little Cahaba Coal Co., 151. 

Little Cahaba forge, the, 70, 73. 

Little Cahaba Iron Works, 186. 

Little Cahaba River, the, J. N. 
Smith's enterprises on, 73; 
Brownes Dam on, 76; men- 
tioned, 23, 74, 172, 173, 207. 

"Little Clifton Railroad," the, 322. 

Little Mountain Cove, 362. 

Little Sandy River, Ky., 211. 

Little Warrior, 490. 

Littlejohn, W. W., 419. 

Liverpool, Eng., 142, 177, 288, 289, 
332, 352. 

Livingston, Edward, 475 n. 

Lloyd, Harriet, 176. 

, "Uncle Johnnie," 312. 

Lockhart property, 496. 

Locust Fork, of the Warrior River, 
50. 

Loggins, Charles, 48. 
London, Eng., 331, 332. 
London, Alex Troy, 204. 

, John, quoted, 203 ; mentioned, 

204. 

London Times, the, 301 n. 
Lone Rock, 366. 
Long, B. M., 501. 

, James C, 299. 

, James Cozby, 250. 

, Gen. Eli, in attack on Selma, 

190, 192, 193. 

, N. W., 217. 

Long Leaf Pine, xxix. 
Longdale, Va., 484. 
Longdale furnace, the, 302, 485. 
Longdale Iron Co., 484. 



INDEX 



561 



Long's Mills, 88. 

Longstreet, Gen. , 203. 

Lookout Mountain, xxix, 305, 367. 

Looney, Col. Robert C., 384. 

Looney's Landing, 37. 

Lopez, E. H., 331. 

, Moses E., 335, 340. 

Loredo, Mexico, 306, 330. 

Loring, Gen. , 172. 

Los Angeles, CaL, xxiv, xxx. 

Loss Creek, 52, 53, 55, 4S9, 491. 

Loss Creek Coal Co., 451. 

Louisiana, 63, 89, 118, 123. 

Louisville, Kv., mentioned, 118, 
165, 171, 245, 246, 247, 251, 261, 
266, 271, 278, 284, 2S7, 288, 299, 
308, 324, 335, 336, 341. 

Louisville & Nashville R. R. Sys- 
tem, granting charter for, 104; 
builds tunnel at Brode's Gap, 124 ; 
Milton S. Smith, president of, 13; 
old original line, 164; acquires 
South & North R. R., 243, 245, 
247, 248, 249, 251; enters coal 
business, 277; association of 
M. H. Smith with, 278-282, 298; 
its importance to Alabama, 298; 
mentioned, 38, 107, 118, 200, 218, 
246, 252, 260, 261, 276, 288, 297, 
307, 308, 310, 348, 352, 410, 419, 
444, 463, 464, 465, 472, 493, 494, 
495, 496, 497. _ 

Louisville Exposition, 295. 

Louisville, New Orleans and Texas 
R. R., 337. 

Lovell, Caroline Stiles, xxiv. 

Lovers Leap, 43. 

Lower Thompson coal mine, 151. 
Lowmoor furnace, the, 302. 
Lowndes, 150. 
Lowndes County, Ala., 270. 
Lowndes County, Miss., 98. 
Lowndes County Academy, Col. 

Powell at, 223. 
Lowrvville, 382. 
Loyal Legion, the, 296, 318. 
Luckie, J. B., 254. 
Luetscher, G. L., 410. 
Lumber, of the Confederacy, 149. 
Lumpkin County, Ga., 110. 
Luzerne County, Pa., 174. 
Lvell, Sir Charles, quoted, 15, 51, 

62, 102. 
Lynch, Thomas, 376. 
Lynchburg, Va., 440. 
Lynn, Mass., 76. 

Lyon, Hon. Francis Strother, pur- 
chases Brierfield, 204 ; mentioned, 
205. 

Lyon County, Ky., 210, 286. 
Lvons, Mark, 501. 
, T. B., 342. 



Mabel Mining Co., 340. 
Maben, John C, 348, 350, 453, 454, 
455. 

, J. C, Jr., 500. 

Mack, Thomas A., 336, 458. 
Macon, Ga., 130, 166, 167, 322. 
Macon County, 270, 293. 
Macon & Western R. R., 111. 
Madison, Ga., 525. 
Madison County, 26, 36, 40, 107, 
270. 

Magella Coal Co., 505. 
Magellan Coal Co., 412. 
"Magic City," the, 232. 
Mahan, Achilles, 21, 23, 24 

, Edward, 21, 23, 25, 71, 184. 

, James, 21, 23. 

, Jesse, 25. 

, Mrs. Jesse, 25, 71. 

, Jonathan, 21, 23. 

, Major John, 24. 

, Kevin Cunningham, 23, 25 

Mahan family, 70, 71. 
Mahans Creek, 23, 24, 71, 170. 
Maine, 126. 

Major, W. C, 513, 528. 
Malaga glass works, N. J., 485. 
Mallet, Col. J. W., 130-133. 
Mallory, Secy. S. R., 141. 
Mammoth mine, 493. 
Manassas, battle of, 137, 300. 
Manchester, 503. 
Manchester, Duchess of, 320. 
Mansion House, the, 159. 
Manufacturers' Record, quoted, 521. 
Marable, D. T., 341. 
Marable homestead, the, 285. 
Marbury, Col. P. H., 375. 
Marengo County, 232, 270. 
Maria forge, the, erection of, 82-87, 
90. 

Marietta College, 317. 
Marion, 72, 158, 172, 316, 336, 
500. 

Marion County, 29, 52, 55, 365. 
Marion County, Tenn., 495. 
Marion County, Texas, 328. 
Marion Junction, 170. 
Marquette ore range, Mich., 468, 
471. 

Marquette Town, 468. 
Marshal Car Wheel Co., 329. 
Marshall, P. S., 66. 
Martaband, 160. 

Martin, Capt. Alburto, 220, 226, 
231. 

, Charles J., 34. 

, John, 44. 

, Gov. , 148. 

, Capt. John Mason, 34, 148. 

, John W., 88. 

, Joshua Lanier, 34. 



562 



INDEX 



Mary Lee mines, the, 318, 479, 
500. 

Mary Pratt furnace, the, 306, 
307. 

Mary Pratt Furnace Co., founded, 
21, 283; mentioned, 263, 284, 
307, 339, 473, 479. 

Maryland, 68, 101, 221 n. 

Marysville, Cal., 482. 

Mason, W. F., 317. 

Masonic Order, the, 163. 

Massachusetts, mentioned, 71, 76, 
115, 165, 170, 264, 268, 424. 

Massingales, the, 23. 

Matthew Addy & Co., 435. 

Matthews County, Va., 170. 

Mauch Chunk, Penn., 36. 

Maury, Lieutenant, 113 n. 

Maury County, 383. 

Maxwell House, Nashville, 384. 

Mayberry Creek, the, 23, 154. 

Maylene, 143, 328. 

McAdory, James, 44. 

McCalla, 307. 

, Maj. R. C, 217, 219, 220. 

McCalley, Henry A., 264, 502. 

, Robert, 324. 

McClanahan, John M., 177. 

McClary, John B., 284, 293; biog- 
raphy of, 294. 

McCollum, William Wallace, steam 
engineer at Selma arsenal, 136, 
137; quoted, 144, 169, 171. 

McComb, John J., 465. 

McCook, Gen. , in attack on 

Selma, 190. 

McCormack, George B., xxxiv, 139, 
186 n., 274, 285, 379-382, 392, 
394, 400, 406, 407, 411, 421, 422, 
425, 430, 431, 432, 433, 435, 456, 
462, 465, 466, 489, 490, 491, 492, 
493, 494, 495, 496; quoted, 281, 
434, 479. 

, H. E., 61, 274, 489, 490, 491, 

492, 493. 
McCoy, John, 407, 408. 
McCrery, Charles, 468, 470. 
McCune, J. H., 284, 288; biography 

of, 300. 
McCune Iron Co., 300. 
McCurdy, W. D., 342. 
McDonald, A., 501. 

, Flora, 459 n. 

, J. K., 465. 

McDonalds, clan of, 349. 

McDuffs, the, 40 n. 

McEachin, Neil, 459 n. 

McElroy, Jacob, 135. 

McElroys, the, 40 n. 

McElwain, W. S. ("Boss"), in 

Shades Valley, 164 ; biography of, 

165; at Holly Springs, Miss., 166 ; 



in Jefferson County, 167; efforts 
to restore industry, 196-199; 
death of, 199. 

McElwain slope, 472. 

McElwain's iron works, 143, 318. 

McFarland, L. B., 501. 

McGee, , 164. 

McGehee, Col. Ralph, Daniel Hill- 
man employed by, 58, 60, 61. 

McKeesport, 524, 526. 

McKenzie College, 235. 

McLaren, Charles, 45. 

, K. K., 447. 

McLaughlin, George, 342. 

McLean, John R., 326. 

McLeary, Lieut., 12. 

McLemore, , 173. 

McMillian, Miss, cited, 311; quoted, 
312. 

McMinn County, Tenn., 294. 
McMinnville, Tenn., 375. 
McMinnville and Manchester R. R. 

Co., 375. 
Mc Phillip, James, 501. 
McQueen, James, 459. 
, James William, 139, 351, 458, 

459. 

, Mrs. J. W., 173, 453, 455. 

, John, 459. 

McRae, Ann, 459. 

, Colin, 140. 

McShan Mountain, 305. 

McTyler, S. B., 417. 

Mc Williams, J. W., 45. 

Mechanical Institute of Stafford- 
shire, Eng., 355. 

Mechanics' National Bank, Knox- 
ville, 282. 

Meek, Alexander, quoted, 19. 

Meharg, L, 92. 

, Louis, 92. 

Meigs, Return Jonathan, 368. 

Melville, Admiral, 352. 

Memphis, Tenn., iron works at, 
147; mentioned, 118, 139, 169, 
170, 246, 290, 291, 335, 361, 382, 
384, 497, 498, 500. 

Memphis & Charleston R. R., mile- 
age of, 105; Major Peters in con- 
struction of, 138; Milton H. 
Smith yardmaster for, 139; men- 
tioned, 36, 118, 247, 278, 380, 
381, 498. 

Memphis Gas Co., 291. 

Mendon, Mass., 268. 

Menominee ore range, 468. 

Merchant, Miss, 454. 

, Charles S., 454. 

Merchants National Bank, Cincin- 
nati, 262. 

Merchants' National Bank, Mem- 
phis, 382. 



INDEX 



563 



Meridian, 118, 136. 

Merrill, H. D., 165, 166, 197, 199; 

quoted, 197. 
Merrimac, the, ironclad, 91, 251. 
Merriman, 317. 

Merthyr Tydvil, Wales, 173, 231. 
Mesabi ore range, 468, 469, 470, 

471. 
Metz, 313. 
Mexican Sea, xxviii. 
Mexican War, mentioned, 17, 92, 

98, 125, 128, 147, 310. 
Mexico, 297, 306, 307. 
Meyer, Cord, 465, 468. 

, M., 135. 

Milburn, W. N., 290. 
Miles, F. W., 342. 
Mill Creek, 160. 
Miami Valley R. R., 440. 
Middendorf, J. William, 474. 
Middlesbrough-on-Trees, 386, 387. 
Middleton, R. O., 501. 
Milldale, 478. 

Miller, Dr. , 150. 

, F. B., 54. 

, Judge G. K., 82; quoted, 87, 

88, 89, 90, 135, 145, 178. 

, Mrs. H. J., 166 n. 

, Prof. L. D., quoted, 182. 

— , W. W., 447. 

Million dollar deal, first in Alabama 
coal and iron trade, 289-290. 

Milner, Bessie, granddaughter of 
John T., quoted, 219 n. 

, Henry, 65. 

— — , Henry Willis, quoted, 109, 110, 
226; mentioned, 225, 438 n., 501, 
503 n. 

■ , Capt. John, 110. 

, John A., 217, 222, 225, 229. 

, John Turner, establishes Ox- 
moor furnaces, 46; appointed 
engineer, 109-112; recommenda- 
tions of, adopted, 121; helps 
found Birmingham, 125; organi- 
zation of Red Mountain Iron & 
Coal Co., 161, 162; reconstruc- 
tion of railroad, 215; agreement 
with Stanton, 219, 220; found- 
ing of Birmingham, 221, 222, 223, 
226; efforts to save Birmingham, 
258; meeting with Col. Sloss, 
277; meeting with Fink, 277; 
quoted, 103, 106, 107, 113-120, 
122, 123, 145, 196, 215, 216, 217, 
225, 247, 248, 249, 252, 269-270, 
274, 277, 298; mentioned, xxx, 
22, 105, 164, 210, 243, 244, 259, 
260, 280, 293, 317, 342, 349, 437, 
438, 451, 457, 476 n., 503 n. 

, William, 65. 

, Maj. Willis J., brother of 



John T., mentioned, 113 n., 227, 

229, 236, 258, 259, 341. 
Milner, Willis T., Sr., 110. 
Milner and Kettig, 341. 
Milner Coal and Railroad Co., 339, 

437. 

Milner seam, the, 252. 

Milnerville, 222 n. 

Milnes district, the, 302. 

Mims, S., quoted, 162. 

Mineral R. R., 336. 

Minneapolis, Minn., xxx. 

Minnesota, 308, 356. 

Minnesota Iron Co., 468, 469, 471. 

Minnesota Steel Co., 527. 

Minor, Lewis, 284, 295. 

Miss Emma Ore Mining Co., 451. 

Mississippi, mentioned, xxviii, 3, 

14, 52, 73, 89, 97, 98, 123, 139, 
143, 151, 158, 162, 164, 165, 166, 
189, 225, 264, 318. 

Mississippi Central R. R., 139, 
165. 

Mississippi River, the, 138, 212, 
213. 

Mississippi State Survey, 264. 
Mississippi Territory, organized, 

xxvii; first blacksmiths sent to, 

2; first settled, 5; 34. 
Mississippi Valley, xxix. 
Missouri, 153, 257. 
Missouri River, the, 153. 
Mitchell, E. K., 247. 
Mitchell, John J., 14 n.; 15, 16, 

40 n., 137, 140 n. 
Mobile, mentioned, xxix, 3, 12, 14, 

15, 16, 37, 48, 51, 53, 55, 60, 68, 
69, 75, 79, 92, 95, 98, 108, 113 n., 
117, 123, 125, 127, 134, 137, 139, 
140 n., 149, 164, 189, 208, 212, 
213, 250, 251, 252, 276, 310, 318, 
474, 491, 496, 520. 

Mobile & Birmingham, R. R. Co., 
475. 

Mobile and Montgomery Railroad, 
276 312. 

Mobile & Ohio R. R., the third 
railroad in Alabama, 38; A. 
Murdock, president of, 98; men- 
tioned, 105, 117, 250, 251, 448. 

Mobile Bay, 109, 145, 213, 310. 

Mobile Coal Co., 212, 279. 

Mobile mines, 207. 

Moffett, Charles A., 449. 

"Mollie Gratz," the, 213. 

Mona mines, 331. 

Monastery Mines & Coke Works, 

402, 403. 
Monetary Commission, 480. 
Monitor, the ironclad, 142, 251. 
Monk, Edwards & Co., coal mines 

of, 150. 



564 



INDEX 



Monongahela River, 400. 
Monroe County, 36. 
Monroe, President, 35. 
Montana, 292. 

Montana Coal & Coke Co., 450. 

Monteagle, Tenn., 365. 

Monte vallo, mentioned, 69, 70, 71, 
74, 75, 112, 113, 115, 123, 150, 
151, 153, 154, 155, 156, 159, 168, 
172, 190, 201, 206, 267, 270. 

Montevallo basin, the, 334. 

Montevallo Coal Co., 221 n., 228, 
295, 453. 

Montevallo coal mines, ascendency 
of, 150; squire's account of, 153- 
156; growth of, 270-271; men- 
tioned, 207, 212, 253, 267, 269, 
293, 296. 

Montevallo Coal Mining Co., 156, 
340. 

Montevallo Coal & Transporta- 
tion Co., 149. 

Montevallo Road, mentioned, 45, 
46, 165, 197, 200. 

Montevallo seam, the, 150, 154, 155. 

Montezuma, 8. 

Montgomery, state bank, at, 37; 
becomes capital, 58; mentioned, 
xxix, 7, 69, 79, 86, 92, 99, 109, 
113, 124, 128, 129, 147, 148, 149, 
151, 153, 155, 162, 165, 181, 183, 
189, 192, 202, 203, 204, 206, 207, 
216, 217, 218, 219, 220, 221, 223, 
225, 227, 228, 237, 245, 249, 250, 
252, 276, 277, 318, 413. 

Montgomery, Col. J. A., 407, 408. 

Montgomery Advertiser, the, 294. 

Montgomery & Pensacola R. R., 117. 

Montgomery & West Point R. R., 
105, 111. 

Montgomery Blues, the, 237. 

Montgomery County, 270, 318, 319. 

Montgomery Dispatch, The, 203. 

Montgomery family, the, 42. 

Montgomery Western R. R., the 
second railroad in Alabama, 38. 

Mooar, George A., 419. 

Moon, R., 356. 

Moore, Andrew D., Governor of 
Alabama, 107; Milner appointed 
by, 109, 110; his report to, 113- 
119. 

, B. F., 342. 

, Catherine Spotswood, 453. 

, H. R., 513. 

, Isaac, 18. 

, J. D., 342. 

, J. W., 342. 

, Dr. John M., establishment 

of Maria forge by, 83; first coal 
mining by, 150; mentioned, 82, 
83, 86, 88, 91, 94, 95. 



Moore, Jones G., 284, 294, 455, 457; 

biography of, 293. 
, P. H., 342. 

, Walter, 352, 412, 413, 415, 

496, 500. 
Moore and Schley, 516, 517. 
Moore & Goode furnace, 91-95, 

181. 

Moore's Bluff, 18. 

Moorewood mines, 399. 

Mooring, John S., 476 n. 

Moragne, John S., 310; biography 
of, 319. 

Morehead, Eugene, 341. 

Moresque Building, the, New Or- 
leans, 165. 

Morewood Coke Co., 403, 404. 

Morgan, the gunboat, 145. 

Morgan, John Pierpont, xxxi, 90, 
516, 517, 518, 465. 

, Senator John T., 42, 70, 207, 

324, 325; cited, 328. 

Morgan County, 413, 419. 

Morgan Co., Ga., 525. 

Morgan, Reuben, 54. 

Morgan, the,' 16. 

Morgan Steamship Line, 213. 

Morrell, Senator (of Vermont), 207, 
325. 

Morris, , 93. 

, E. G., 96. 

, George L., 307, 342. 

, Jim, 233. 

, John E., 447. 

, Josiah, mentioned, 106, 125, 

221, 222, 223, 244; biography of, 

221 n. 

, Marshall, 271. 

, Thomas, 307. 

, W. H., 342. 

Morris Bank, 221, 222. 
Morris family, the, 94. 
Morris Hotel, the, 221 n. 
Morris Mining Co., 95, 340, 355. 
Morrison, Anna, 269. 

, George A., 269. 

Morrison & Company, George A., 

296. 

Morrisville, 96, 222 n. 

Morrow, Dr. George, quoted, 198. 

, Hugh, 45. 

, Dr. William, 379, 382, 529. 

Mortimer, Richard, 453. 
Moses, Alfred H., 413, 414, 416, 
417. 

Mound ville, 170. 
Mount, T. S., 162, 256. 
Mt. .Etna, 257, 262. 
Mount Hope Mining Co., N. J., 
470. 

Mount Hope mines, 471. 
Mount Pinson, 22, 48, 199. 



INDEX 



565 



Mt. Pinson Iron Works, 161, 163, 
164. 

Bit. Pinson Road, 164. 

Mt. Pleasant, 404. 

Mount Vernon, arsenal, at, 16, 17, 
18 ; Gen. Gorges in command of, 
125, 126; condition of arsenal, 
128, 129 ; arsenal transferred 
from, 134; use of old arsenal, 
147; mentioned, 136, 187, 208, 
278. 

Mountain Valley Coal & Coke Co., 
493. 

Mountain Valley mines, 503. 

Mud Creek, 160. 

Mudd, Doak, 396. 

, James A., 44, 48, 51. 

, Judge William S., mentioned, 

45, 51, 222, 257, 258, 259. 

Muddtown, 222 n. 

Mudtown, 43. 

Mulberry Forks, 52, 502. 

Mulberry River, the, 50, 488. 

Mumford, 476. 

Mundie, P. J., 528. 

Munford, 89. 

Munson, W. D., 297. 

Murdock, Abraham, 97. 

, James, 97. 

Murfreesboro, 56. 

Murphree's Valley, 50. 

Murphy's Valley Branch of L. & N. 
R.R., 444. 

Murray, John G., 325. 

Muscatine, la., 296. 

Muscoda group, 471, 472. 

Muscogees, the, 5; possession of Ft. 
Toulouse, 7; defeat the Ala- 
bamas, 8; departure from Ala- 
bama, 46, 47; use of iron by, 
90. 

Muscogen R. R., 111. 

Musgrove, Breck, 56. 

, Calpurnia, 55. 

, Dr. Edward Gordon, 56. 

, Maj. F. A., 57; in coal busi- 
ness, 22; widow of, 55; partner 
of Rufus Jones, 56; raises two 
battalions, 57; mentioned, 52. 

, J. C, 55, 501. 

, L. B., 55, 489, 501, 502. 

Musgrove's Battalion, 57. 

Mussel Shoals, 36, 37, 113. 

Myer, Morris, & Co., 252. 

Nabers, Drayton, 45. 

William F., 45, 222. 

Nance, J. D., 169. 

Napier, Dr. Robert, 31. 

Nashville, Term., mentioned, 31, 
61, 118, 165, 185, 210, 215, 223, 
245, 262, 286, 287, 290, 308, 311, 



335, 361, 363, 364, 370, 374, 382, 
383, 384, 392, 394, 397, 398, 399, 
400, 418, 420, 421, 425, 490 n. 
Nashville & Decatur R. R., 107, 
245, 249. 

Nashville & Northwestern R. R., 
246. 

Nashville, Chattanooga, & St. Louis 
R. R., 243, 244, 246, 362, 365, 
378, 496. 

Nashville Union, quoted, 423. 

Nat, Uncle, former slave, 354. 

Natchez, Miss., 12, 143. 

Nathan, Joseph H., 417. 

National Bank of Birmingham, 
227 

National Centennial (1897), 265. 
National Galvanizing Works, 526. 
National Steel Co., 486, 510. 
National Tube Co., 512, 520, 524, 
526. 

Nealy, J. C, 290. 

Neath Abbey Iron Works, Wales, 
355. 

Nebraska, 152, 292. 
Needham, Mass., 71. 
Neeley, J. C, 501. 
Nelson, Frank, Jr., president Em- 
r pire Coal Co., xxxiv, 227, 489, 
503, 505, 506. 

, H. S., 505. 

, O. O., 414. 

, Capt. R. M., 136. 

Nesbit, Colonel, 65. 
, T. M., 513. 

Nesmith, Walter, quoted, 97, 98, 

158. 
Nevada, 292. 

New Albany and Chicago R. R., 

299. 
New Berne, 14. 
Newberry, 32. 
Newburyport, Mass., 98. 
Newcastle, 69, 272, 438. 
Newcastle Coal & Iron Co., 252, 

293. 

Newcastle mines, the, 252, 260, 
272. 

Newcastle on Tyne, Term., 385. 
Newcomb, Col. H. D., president of 

Louisville & Nashville R. R., 247, 

248, 249. 
Newcombe, Victor, 261. 
New Connellsville Coal & Coke Co., 

499. 

New Found, 457. 

New Hampshire, 161, 264. 

New Jersey, 59, 210, 269, 401, 490 n. 

New Jersey Central R. R., 115. 

Newman, Taz. W., 369. 

New Mexico, 318, 500. 

New Orleans, battle of, 14, 15 n.; 



566 



INDEX 



fall of, 89, 134; Alabama coal in- 
troduced into, 279-280; men- 
tioned, 60, 75, 118, 139, 143, 147, 
165, 212, 221 n., 227, 298, 335, 
352, 449. 

New Orleans Gas Co., 280. 

New Orleans, Jackson & Great 
Northern R. R., 118. 

New Pratt mine, 493. 

New Richmond, Ohio, 299. 

New River district, the, 302. 

"New South," Porter's, quoted, 
301-306; mentioned, 301 n. 

New York (State), 71, 90, 101, 139, 
142, 268, 269. 

New York, N. Y., 139, 165, 252, 
280, 295, 296, 297, 307, 312, 315, 
348, 359, 364, 383. 

New York Herald, quoted, 524. 

New York, New Haven, & Hartford 
R.R., 483. 

New York Press, the, quoted, 301- 
306; mentioned, 301 n. 

New York Press Association, visits 
Birmingham, 232. 

New York Stock Exchange, 362. 

New York Sun, the, quoted, 344, 
383. 

New York Times, the, quoted, 
321. 

Newark, N. J., 269. 

, Ohio, 317. 

Nickleplate Seam, 492, 493. 
Nicol, James, 497. 
Nitre Works, 135. 
Noble, A. J., 202, 241, 255. 

, George, 310, 322. 

, James (brother of Samuel), 

322; biography of, 322. 
, James (father of Samuel), 

builds Cornwall furnace, 184 ; 

biography of, 322; mentioned, 

310. 

James & Sons, firm of, 129, 

184, 185. 

, Jenifer Ward, 476 n. 

, Mrs. Jenifer Ward, 179, 

184. 

, John H., 476 n. 

, John W., 310, 314, 322. 

, Mary, sister of Samuel, xxiv, 

184 n. 

, Samuel, buys Jenifer furnace, 

179; builds Woodstock group, 
179, 185, 313-314; revives Ox- 
ford furnace, 181, 312; builds 
Cornwall furnace, 184; biography 
of, 310-316; interest in Anniston, 
321 ; appreciation by John E. 
Ware, 323 ; honor paid at death, 
324; quoted, 302-303; men- 
tioned, 275, 295, 310, 474, 476 n. 



Noble, Stephen N., 310, 322, 474, 
476 n. ; biography of, 322. 

, William, 310, 322. 

Noble Brothers, revive iron in- 
dustry after war, 195; move to 
Woodstock, 315; mentioned, 288, 
314, 316, 321. 

Noble family, the, 162, 323. 

Noble Institute, the, 321. 

Noble iron works, the, 310, 322. 

Nolan, C. A., 492. 

Norfolk, Va., 128, 323 n. 

North, A. W., 475 n. 

North Alabama Furnace Co., 451. 

North Alabama Furnace, Foundry, 
& Land Co., 418. 

North Alabama R. R., 107. 

North Birmingham, 349, 355, 446, 
505, 457. 

North Birmingham Building Asso- 
ciation, 342. 

North Birmingham Land Co., 505. 

North Carolina, mentioned, 6, 45, 
62, 64, 71, 91, 101, 130, 136, 138, 
163, 167, 169, 184, 203, 349. 

North Highlands Co., 342. 

North Riding, Yorkshire, 386. 

Northeast & Southwest R. R., the 
sixth railroad in Alabama, 38; 
construction of, 105; mentioned, 
51, 115, 118. 

Northern Alabama Railroad, 32, 
503. 

Norton, Ex., 476. 

, G. W., 418. 

Norton, John M., 418. 
Norton Iron Co., 385. 
Norvell, Peyton, 501. 
Nullification Party, the, 65. 
Nunley Ridge, 495. ♦ 
Nunley Ridge Coal Co., 489, 493. 

Oakland, Cal., 482. 

Oakley, James G., runs Ashby 

Brick Works, 137. 
Oakman, W. G., 453. 
O'Brien, Capt. Frank P., biography 

of, 237 ; heroism of, 254 ; quoted, 

256, 258; mentioned, 235, 255, 

259, 292. 

, Michael, 237. 

, Moss, & Hogan, 252. 

O'Connor, Thomas, 379, 382. 
Oglebay, Earl W., 359. 
Ogleby, Earl W., 509, 515. 
Oglethorpe County, Ga., 106. 
Oglethorpe University, 136. 
Ohatchie Creek, 92. 
Ohatchie station, 181. 
Ohio, mentioned, 116, 142, 165, 196, 

210, 296, 300, 317, 356, 358, 418, 

484, 490 n., 509. 



INDEX 



567 



Ohio and Mississippi R. R., 325. 
Ohio River, the, 212, 213, 246, 279. 
Old Blount County, 40. 
Old Cedar Creek, first blast furnace, 

27, 34. 
Old Coal Bank, 362. 
Old Dominion Nail Works, 137. 
Old Furnace Road, the, 160. 
"Old Guard, The," 490. 
Old Jonesboro, 98, 194. 
Old Kentucky Steam Furnace, 256. 
"Old Man Wooten's fox hole," 

366. 

"Old Napier Furnace," 31. 

"Old Nebo," 492. 

Old Polkville Furnace, 91. 

Old St. Francis Street, 15. 

Old Sewanee furnace, 379. 

Old South and North R. R., see 

South and North R. R. 
Old State Road, 65. 
"Old Tannehill," mentioned, 58, 61, 

67, 158, 159, 201. 
Oldtown, 43. 
Old Warrior Town, 52. 
Old Winston furnace, the, 158. 
Oliver Mining Co., 469. 
Oliver's post-office, Term., 364 n. 
O'Neal, A. P., quoted, 75. 
Oneonta, ore discovered at, 23. 
"Opelika," 336. 
Open Hearth plant, 514. 
Opossum Valley, 532. 
Orange County, 453 n. 
Ordinance of Secession, 57. 
Oregon, the warship, 352. 
Orman, W. A., 32. 
Orr, Mrs. C. P., 438. 

, James L., 82, 89. 

, William Craig, 82, 89. 

Osage County, Kansas, 326. 
Ossian, 18. 

Our Mountain Home, 316. 
Overturned Measures, the, 327. 
Owen, Rose, quoted, 158. 

, Thomas Hennington, 158, 159. 

, Dr. Thomas M., xxiv, 90 n., 

141. 

Owenton, 41, 44. 

Oxford, 313, 317, 475. 

Oxford furnace, constructed dur- 
ing the war, 179; destruction of, 
181 ; purchased by Samuel Noble, 
312; mentioned, 186, 310, 311. 

Oxford Iron Co., organization of, 
179, 180; iron used by Con- 
federacy, 180. 

Oxmoor Furnace Co, see Eureka 
Mining Co. 

Oxmoor furnaces, establishment of, 
46; first coke pig iron made at, 
60 ; managed by Stroup, 67 ; 



' building of, 161, 163; naming 
of, 161; construction used at, 
163; development of, 164-168; 
destruction of, 194; rebuilt, 195; 
ruins of, 201, 202; reconstruction 
of, 204, 238, 239; plant closed, 
253; acquired by Judge Mudd, 
257; acquired by DeBardeleben, 
261 ; cost of iron making at, 303- 
304; mentioned, 11, 42, 124, 138, 
164, 165, 186, 187, 200, 203, 237, 
242, 257, 262, 272, 277, 279, 287, 
292, 294, 297, 336, 338, 348, 418, 
424, 455, 456, 472. 

Oxmoor plantation, 203. 

Paint Creek, Ohio, 59. 

Palaas, Antonia, fortifies Hobuck- 

intopa, 12. 
Palmer, Robert, 501. 
Palmyra, N. Y., 268. 
Panama, 520. 

Panama Canal, 113 n., 126. 

Panic of 1873, 252. 

Panther Creek Valley, Penn., 37. 

Parham, Rev. Mr., 51. 

Paris Exposition (1878), 265. 

Parker, D. J., 498. 

, Duncan T., 476. 

Parks, , 82. 

Parrish, Alfred, 331. 

, Dil wynne, 331. 

Parrott shells, 143, 164. 

Parsons, George, 453. 

, Gov. Lewis E., 90. 

Parys mines, 331. 

Pascagoula, 465. 

Patterson, J. C, 492, 489, 493. 

, P. M., 498. 

Patterson Transfer Co., 498. 

Pattison, George G., sec'y and 
treas. of Oxford Iron Co., 179. 

Patton, Governor , 119. 

, James, 53. 

Patton mines, 502. 

Patty, M. H., 409. 

Payne, O. H., 515. 

, William, 53. 

Peabody Furnace, the, 152. 

Peacock Coal, Iron, and Improve- 
ment Co., 342. 

Peacock, George, biography of, 
142, 143, 177; employed by 
Com. Jones, 144-145, 145 n. ; re- 
port on Brierfield iron, 171, 172. 

Pearson, Col. Robert H., quoted, 
210; biography of, 236, 237; 
heroism of, 254; mentioned, 235, 
340, 342. 

Pearson Coal and Coke Co., 236. 

Pearson Coal and Iron Co., 236. 

Pease, Edward, 386. 



568 



INDEX 



Pease, Edwin Lucas, 385. 

, Henry F., 385. 

Peck, E. W., 45. 

Pegram, R. B., 380, 381. 

Pelzer and Rogers, 335. 

Pencoyd Steel Works, 430. 

Pendleton District, S. C, 72. 

Pennington, E. B., 490. 

Pennsylvania, mentioned, 64, 66, 
68, 84, 86, 101, 113 n., 114, 116, 
125, 126, 153, 154, 165, 173, 174, 
175, 184, 212, 229, 252, 253, 269, 
292, 299, 300, 311, 313, 322, 327, 
353, 354, 355, 356, 358, 400, 401, 
484, 490, 490 n., 494, 509, 521. 

Pennsylvania R. R., 402. 

Pennsylvania steel interests, 522. 

Pensacola, Fla., 189, 241, 298, 520. 

Percy, Walker, 306, 465, 468, 528. 

Perin, C. P., 445. 

Perkins, Crawford, his Industrial 

History of Ensley, 395. 

, George W., 517. 

Perry County, 73, 170, 293, 500. 
Perry, Matthew Galbraith, 145 n. 
Peter, George F., 143; biography 

of, 328. 

, Thomas Jefferson, biography 

of, 325-327 ; mentioned, 328, 500. 

Peters, Maj. Thomas, acquires ore 
land, 23; prominence of, 46; 
connection with arsenal at Selma, 
136; account of, 138; in Oxford 
Iron Co., 180; last days of, 208- 
210; assists in first million- 
dollar deal, 289-290; his death, 
295; his character, 295; men- 
tioned, 211, 219, 232, 233, 260, 
285, 287, 306, 437, 451. 

Petersburg, 326. 

Petersburg, Va., 101, 102. 

Pettus, Edmund W., senator, 350. 

Pfaff, Herman, 328. 

Phelan, Hon. John D., 112. 

Phelan & McBride Iron Works, 
135. 

Phelps family, the, 264. 
Philadelphia, Penn., mentioned, 59, 

67, 68, 101, 126, 165, 264, 289, 

484. 

Philadelphia and Reading R. R., 
322. 

Philadelphia Furnace Co., 451. 
"Philadelphia Furnace," the, 352. 
Philadelphia Sun, the, 68. 
Phillips, Cyrus, 202. 

, Daniel, 475 n. 

, Jacob, 54. 

• Dr. William B., 32, 352, 428, 

429. 
Piachee, 18. 
Pickens, Andrew, 6. 



Pickens, Sarah, 459. 

Pickens County, 34, 55. 

Pickensville, 474. 

Pickett, xxvii n. 

, Albert J., 6. 

Pierce, J. T., 252, 260, 292. 

, S. C, 135. 

— , Thomas B., 135. 

Pierce Warrior Mining Co., 340. 

Pierce's foundry, 135. 

Pierce's mines, 236. 

Pierson, D., Jr., 452. 

Pigeon Creek, 110. 

Pigeon Roost gold vein, 110. 

Pike County, Ga., 110. 

Pill, John R., 489, 497, 499. 

Pillow, Gen. , 172. 

Pinckard, Peyton Jett, 336. 

, William Peyton, 297, 340; 

quoted, 337, 346; biography of, 
336-337 : mentioned, 478. 

Pinckard and DeBardeleben Land 
Co., 334, 337. 

Pine Grove Steam furnace, the, 60. 

" Pioneer Days" quoted, 40. 

Pioneer Iron Co., the, 42, 46, 297. 

Pioneer Mining and Manufacturing 
Co., 229, 337, 342, 347 ; beginnings, 
212; history of, 353-356; ab- 
sorbed by Republic Iron and Steel 
Co., 356-357, 450. 

Piper coal mines, 151, 325, 326. 

Pittsburg, Penn., mentioned, xxv, 
xxx, xxxii, 66, 165, 212, 256, 
257, 300, 333, 356, 367, 400, 521, 
525, 526, 530. 

Pittsburg Chronicle Telegraph, 
quoted, 422. 

Pittsburg coal, replaced by Ala- 
bama coal, 279-280. 

Pittsburg District, the, 327, 355, 467, 
486. 

"Pittsburg of the South," the, 19, 
134. 

Pittsfield, Mass., 165. 
Plantersville, 190. 

Piatt, Thomas C, 420, 421, 423, 
529. 

Piatt mine, Mich., 471. 

Plumb, , Senator (of Kansas), 

207, 325, 328. 
Plymouth, Mass., 143. 
Pocahontas mines, 503. 

Polk, Gen. , 138. 

, James K., 65, 93. 

Polkville, 93. 

Pollard, Charles T., 104, 139, 255. 
Pollok, Theo., xxiv. 
Pontotoc County, Miss., 40 n. 
Ponty Prodd, Wales, 292. 
Pony express, the, 45. 
Poplar Creek, 364 n. 



INDEX 



569 



Porter, Admiral, 145 n. 
, M. T., 45. 

, Robert P., cited, 287; quoted, 

301-306; positions held by, 301 n. 
Portis, Capt. T. J., 155. 
Posey, Joseph, 22, 48. 

, Joseph H., 21. 

Potter, 471. 

Potter, Mark W., 288, 451. 
Pounders, L. K, quoted, 28, 29. 
Powell, George, quoted, 40, 42, 
50. 

, Col. James R., mentioned, 

106, 125, 210, 222, 226, 278; 
biography of, 223-225; lays out 
town of Birmingham, 226; se- 
cures courthouse for Birmingham, 
231, 232; booms the town, 233, 
234; departure from Birming- 
ham, and death of, 254 n. ; quoted, 
233, 257. 

Powell and Jemison, mail stage 

system of, 38, 224. 
Powellton, 222 n. 

Pratt City, xxix, 273, 291, 292, 
294, 354. 

Pratt Coal Co., 489, 490, 491, 492, 
493, 494, 495, 496. 

Pratt Coal Co. of Delaware, 493. 

Pratt Coal and Coke Co., organized, 
273; development of, 274-276; 
becomes Pratt Coal and Iron Co., 
291; mentioned, 22, 250, 295, 
306, 339, 361, 425. 

Pratt Coal and Iron Co., 237, 283, 
284, 293, 294, 338, 339, 361, 384, 
424, 425, 457, 478, 490 ; organized, 
291; conveyed to Tennessee Co., 
362. 

Pratt Consolidated Coal Co., men- 
tioned, 34, 61, 69, 186 n., 228, 
274, 358, 366, 393, 412, 473, 489, 
490, 491, 492, 493, 496, 497, 499, 
500. 

Pratt, Daniel, biography of, 162, 
163; entrance into Birmingham 
District, 238-242 ; mentioned, 
97, 99, 124, 165, 202, 220, 241, 
242, 261, 264, 270, 273, 290, 472, 
490. 

, Ellen, wife of Col. De- 

Bardeleben, 239, 241. 
, M. E., 162, 255, 397, 398, 

400, 405, 406, 411, 421, 422, 450, 

476, 514, 530, 532. 
Pratt mines, 270, 274, 275, 276, 

280, 283, 284, 285, 290, 291, 295, 

306, 348. See also Pratt Coal and 

Coke Co. 
Pratt mines R. R., 284. 
Pratt seam, the, 260, 291; named, 

273, 492, 493. 



Prattville, mentioned, 79, 99, 162, 
163 , 239, 240, 241, 253, 264, 
267. 

Prattville Dragoons, the, 241. 
Price, Isaac, 299. 

, T. W., 55. 

Priestfleld, Eng., 355. 
Prime, Mr., 476 n. 
Princeton University, 7. 

Pritchard, , 260. 

, J. H., 356. 

Prout, , 204. 

Providence, R. I., 152, 307. 
Prude, David, 44. 

, Jonathan, 62. 

, Mary, 62. 

Pry or, Luke, mentioned, 21, 104, 

107, 245. 
Pryors, Ga., 480. 

Pugh, Senator James L., 224, 408. 
Pulaski, Term., 421. 
Pushmataha, chief, prevents alliance 
with British, 5 ; quoted, 134. 

Queen Anne Furnace, the, 339. 
"Quick or the Dead, The" (Rives), 
250. 

Quintard, Bishop, 207, 311. 
Quintards, the, 312. 

"Raccoon Roughs," the, 183. 

Radclilfe, Thomas D., 396. 

Ragan, John T., 82, 87. 

Ragans, the, 23. 

Raglan estate, 144. 

Raglan mines, 69. 

Ragland, E. M., 417. 

Raglin Coal Co., 505. 

Railroads, in general, see Table of 
Contents. 

Raimund mine, the, 356. 

Rainey, , 206. 

Rains, Col. , 140. 

Ramsay, Erskine, xxiv, 274, 352, 
376, 399, 400, 401, 402, 403, 404, 
405, 406, 407, 411, 422, 425, 466, 
489, 490, 491, 492, 493, 494. 

, George, 401. 

, Morris, 401, 402. 

, Robert, 399, 400, 401, 402, 

404. 

, William, 401. 

Ramwell, William, 385. 
Randolph, 170. 

Randolph, George B., 90 n.; quoted, 

179, 310, 314. 

, Judge, quoted, 91, 96, 181. 

Randolph County, 90. 

Range Line Road, the, 188, 189, 190, 

192. 

Ratcliffe, Thomas D., 291. 
Reading, 307. 



570 



INDEX 



Reading, Perm., 184. 

Reardon, Lieut. , 142. 

Reconstruction Laws, 216. 
Redcar, 387. 

Red Mountain, xxix, xxxiv ; named, 
11; discovery of ore in, 45, 46; 
tested by Stroup, 66 ; Gilmer's dis- 
covery of iron in, 106 ; use of ore 
from, 124; opening up of, 161, 162; 
poor ore from, 263; mentioned, 
42, 47, 52, 73, 115, 160, 204, 206, 
209, 211, 218, 225, 232, 261, 274, 
288, 307, 354, 424, 437, 452, 457, 
471, 472, 473, 490 n., 494, 514, 
532. 

Red Mountain Iron and Coal Co., 
controlling interest acquired by 
Pratt and DeBardeleben, 238, 
242 ; taken over by Eureka Mining 
and Transportation Co., 255 ; men- 
tioned, 60, 155, 161, 162, 163, 
164, 186, 201, 241. 

Red Mountain Mining and Manufac- 
turing Co., 342. 

Red Ore Bank, 334. 

Red River, the, 8. 

Red River Iron Works, the, 325. 

Redding, 356. 

Redding mines, 211. 

Reddington, 263. 

Red Star Coal Co., 413. 

Red Top mines, 404. 

Reed, F. L., 445. 

, J. W., 340. 

Reeder, Stephen, 44. 

Reid family, the, 42. 

Reid, Levi, 50. 

"Relay House," the, 234, 235, 

289. 
Republic, 356. 

Republic Iron and Steel Co., men- 
tioned, 22, 42, 46, 61, 160, 173, 
211, 212, 229, 284, 292, 337, 347, 
354, 449, 450, 451, 473, 490 n., 
509, 511, 513; absorbs Pioneer 
Mining and Manufacturing Co., 
356-357; capacity in 1901, 358; 
present officers, 358-359. 

Republic Iron Works, 526. 

Republic mine, Mich., 471. 

Reynolds, Maj. Walker, 82, 87. 

Reynoldsburg, Tenn., 256. 

Rhode Island, 152. 

Rhode Island Locomotive Works, 
483. 

Rhodes, Gen. Rufus Napoleon, 21, 
298, 465, 509. 

, Rufus Randolph, 465. 

, Thomas C, 21. 

Rice, J. R., 443. 
Richards, J. V., 342. 
Richmond, 128, 130, 132, 135. 



Richmond, Va., mentioned, 128, 
137, 141, 161, 166, 185, 324 n., 
351, 453. 

Richmond and Allegheny R. R., 

324 n., 440. 
Richmond and Danville R. R., 

383. 

Richmond and West Point R. R., 
350. 

Richmond and West Point Terminal 

Railway and Warehouse Co., 454. 
Rickey, 160. 
Rickey, P. C, 356. 

Riddle, , 74. 

, George M., 82, 86. 

, John, 83, 84. 

, Samuel, 83, 84. 

, S. S., 86. 

, Walter D., 83, 84, 88. 

Riddle family, the, 85. 

Riddles' bloomery, 87. 

Riddle's Mill, 86. 

Riddles' Mill foundry, 82. 

Ridge Valley, 314. 

Rio Grande, the, 8. 

Rio Janeiro, 297. 

Rising Fawn, Ga., 289, 292, 334. 

Rising Fawn and Chattanooga 

furnace companies, 379. 
Rising Fawn Iron Co., 338. 
Rising Fawn plant, the, 263. 
Ritchie, William C, 92. 
Rivers and Harbors Congress, 480. 
Riverside Iron Works, 299, 300, 

512, 513. 
Riverton, 30, 526. 
"River View," 135. 
Rives, Col. Alfred S., 250, 251, 

448. 

, Amelie, 250. 

Roane Iron Works, 262, 338. 

Roanoke District, the, 302. 

Robbins, John, 135. 

Roberts, Anne, 339. 

, David, biography of, 331-332 ; 

quoted, 334; mentioned, 334, 
335, 336, 339, 424, 425, 428. 

, David, Jr., 339, 428. 

, Mrs. David, nee Belle Sumter 

Yates, 332. _ 

Robertson, William, 54. 

Robinson, C. F., 419. 

, Gen. Cornelius, 155. 

, Maj. , 250. 

Robinson Mining Co., 425. 

Rob Roy forge, 82, 86, 87, 201. 

Rochdale, England, 152. 

Rock House, 11. 

Rock Run furnace, destroyed by 
raid, 183; supplies iron to Con- 
federacy, 186; mentioned, 187, 
319. 



INDEX 



571 



Rock Run Furnace Co., 317. 
Rockett, Mrs. Louisa M., quoted, 

70, 72. 

, Thomas W., 45. 

Rockwood, 29, 305. 
Rockwood, Tenn., 338. 
Rockwood furnace, the, 302. 
Rocky Mountains, the, 332. 
Roddey, Gen. , in defense 

of Selma, 190-194; mentioned, 

201. 

Roden, Benjamin F., biography of, 
235, 236; quoted, 294, 462; 
mentioned, 259, 294, 342. 

, John B., 235. 

, W. B., 235. 

Roden, B. F., Wholesale Grocery 

Co., 236. 
Roden Coal Co., 236. 
Roebuck, Alfred, 219. 
Rogan, L. A., 408. 

Rogers, , 150. 

, P. L., 299. 

, W. R., 135. 

Rogers, Brown & Co., Birmingham, 
503 n. 

Rolling mill, first in Alabama, 81. 
"Romance of Steel," Casson's, 

quoted, 352. 
Rome, Ga., mentioned, 66, 78, 93, 

129, 184, 206, 302, 310, 311, 313, 

315, 320, 322, 324. 
Rome, Italy, 251. 
Rome and Decatur R. R., 320. 
Roosevelt, Theodore, quoted, 26; 

mentioned, 315 n., 480, 517, 

518. 

Rosamond, E. P., 34, 490, 493. 

, Dr. William Capers, 34, 501. 

Rosen, Walter T., 447. 

Rothwell, Richard P., quoted, 253. 

Round Mountain, Stroup's furnace 

at, 65, 163; worked before the 

war, 96; mentioned, 314. 
Round Mountain Charcoal Blast 

Furnace Co., 319. 
Round Mountain Coal and Iron Co., 

sold by Stroup, 66; Pratt's 

interest in, 163; mentioned, 320. 
Round Mountain furnace, supplies 

iron to Confederacy, 183, 186; 

destruction of, 194; rebuilt, 195j 

mentioned, 320. See also Oxmoor 

furnaces. 

Roupe, , 40 n. 

Roupes Creek, 58, 67, 160. 
Roupes Valley, 40 n., 58, 61, 63, 

159, 337. 

Roupes Valley Iron Works, erec- 
tion of, 58, 59; mentioned, 186. 

Rousseau, Gen. Lovell H., destroys 
Cane Creek iron works, 93, 94, 



179; destroys Janney and Crow 

iron works, 182, 183. 
Rowlett, John Colley, 408. 
Rownd, Harry L., 358, 359. 
"Royal Family, The," 401. 
Rucker, E. W., 341, 342, 428, 453, 

501. 

Ruffin, Edmund, 102. 

Ruffner ore mines, 355. 

Rusk, Texas, 329. 

Russell, J. M., 505. 

, Maj. William, 20, 21, 27, 34, 

352, 451. 
Russells Valley, 21, 27, 33. 
Russell ville, mentioned, 21, 27, 30, 

31, 32, 33, 34, 352, 452, 457. 
Russellville Ore Co., 451, 457. 
Rutherford, John A., 453. 
Ryan, Agnes E., xxiv. 

, John, 501. 

, Thomas F., 517. 

Ryding, H. C, 527. 

Sad lee, William Rose, 44. 
Sage, Russell, 243, 244, 248. 
St. Clair, 25. 

St. Clair County, Raglan mines 
opened in, 69; cost of iron rails 
in, 115; coal supplied by, 149, 
157; mentioned, 144, 153, 353. 

St. Clair Mining and Mineral Com- 
pany, 285. 

St. Clairsville, Ohio, 510. 

St. Louis, Mo., 153, 246, 263, 326, 
328, 335, 338, 341, 498. 

St. Louis, Iron Mountain, and South- 
ern R. R., 380. 

St. Michaels Church (Anniston), 
321, 322. 

St. Stephens, temporary seat of 
government of Alabama Terri- 
tory, 9, 13, 14; deserted, 16; 
capital of Alabama Territory, 
18, 22, 58; mentioned, 204, 278. 
See also Fort St. Stephens. 

St. Stephens Academy, founding of 
the, 35. 

St. Stephen's Bluff, xxxiv. 

St. Stephens Steamboat Co., 35. 

St. Vincent College, Westmoreland, 
403. 

St. Xavier College, 325. 

Salt Creek, 316, 476 n. 

Salt Creek Furnace, 71. See also 
Salt Creek Iron Works. 

Salt Creek Iron Works, second fur- 
nace in Talladega County, 90; 
establishment of, 178; men- 
tioned, 186, 187. 

Saltpeter, made in Jackson County, 
183. 

Saltpeter Works, 135. 



572 



INDEX 



"Sam Noble's resting-place," 312. 
Samoset Coal Co., 500. 
" Samuel F. Tracy," locomotive, 
366. 

San Antonio, Texas, 306, 330, 331, 
344. 

San Jose, Cal., 111. 
San Juan Mining District (Colorado), 
296. 

Sanders family, the, 54. 
Sandusky, Ohio, 165. 
Sandy Ridge, N. C, 320. 
Sanford County, 97. 
Sankerton, Scotland, 68. 
Sanson, Emma, 183. 
Saunders Rolling Mill, 186. 
Saunders, William L., and Co., 158. 
Savage Creek, 497. 
Savannah, Ga., 118, 162, 338, 382, 
525. 

Savannah and Florida R. R., 337. 

Saylet, , 326. 

Sayre, 357. 

, Robert H., 212, 353; organ- 
izes Sayre Mining and Manufac- 
turing Co., 357. 

Sayre Mining and Manufacturing 
Co., 353; organized, 357. 

Sayreton, 356, 358. 

Schaff, Gen. Morris, quoted, 127. 

Schley, Grant B., 359, 509, 515, 516, 
517. 

Schmidt, Jacob, 342. 

, Peter S., 237. 

Schoenmaker, S. L., 468. 
Schools, in early Alabama, 45. 
Schuler, E. T., 445. 

, George H., 445. 

, H. B., 445. 

Schultz Creek, 71, 72. 
Schustamer and Cramer, 478. 
Schuylkill County, Pa., 175. 
Schwab, 524. 
Scotland, 349. 
Scott, David, 72. 

, David M., quoted, 72. 

, Tom, 402. 

, Gen. Winfield, 24. 

Scottdale, Pa., 376. 

Scottish pig iron, 302. 

Scotts bloomery, 70. 

Scottsville, 72, 334. 

Scranton, Pa., 174, 175, 237, 292. 

Seaboard Air Line R. R., 181. 

Searles, John E., 474. 

Seattle, Wash., xxx. 

Secession Convention, the, 57. 

"Second Biennial Report of the 

Geology of Alabama," 31. 
Seddon, , Sec. of War U. S. A., 

161, 351, 459. 
, Thomas O., biography of, 



350-352, 452, 453, 455, 458, 459, 
525. • ,\ 

Seddon, William C, 352. 

Seixas, H. O., 453. 

Selden's battery, 137. 

Seligman, Isaac N., 517. 

Selkirk, J. M., 319. 

Selma, naming of, 18; importance 
of, 19, 187; Confederate arsenal 
transferred to, 134; importance 
of works at, 135-147; fortifica- 
tion of, 187, 188; attack and 
capture of, 189-194; mentioned, 
15, 25, 51, 69, 75, 92, 93, 99, 109, 
112, 130. 149, 164, 167, 168, 171, 
172, 176, 206, 207, 209, 213, 260, 
269, 278, 293, 294, 296, 349. 

Selma mines, 207. 

Selma, the gunboat, 145. 

Selma Iron Works, 135. 

Selma Rolling Mill, 186. 

Selma, Rome & Dalton R. R., the 
fourth railroad in Alabama, 38; 
construction of, 105; mentioned, 
112, 140, 150, 151, 173, 197, 206, 
225, 278, 312, 319. 

Selma Shovel Factory, 135. 

Seminole War, 235. 

Semmes, Capt. Raphael, 129. 

Sequatchie Valley, 371, 375, 378, 
385, 390. 

Sevier, John, 373. 

Sewanee, Tenn., xxiv, 207, 362, 364, 
365, 370. 

Sewanee Coal, 365, 366, 367, 375, 
376. 

Sewanee Coke, 377. 
Sewanee Furnace, 377. 
Sewanee Furnace Co., 379, 425. 
Sewanee Mining Co., 362, 365, 367, 

368, 425; presidents of, 528. 
Sewanee Seam. Tenn., 495. 
Shackleford, W. C, 496. 
Shades Creek, 61, 67, 165. 
Shades Mountain, mentioned, 42, 

43, 124, 161. 
Shades Mountain reservoir, 530. 
Shades Valley, mentioned, 11, 42, 

161, 164, 167, 195, 196, 200, 241, 

274, 472. 
Shaft seam, the, 154. 
Shafton, Pa., 401, 402. 
Shafton Coal Co., 399, 402. 
Shannon, James, 262, 263, 288, 289, 

336, 386, 455. 
, John, quoted, 262; men- 
tioned, 435, 440, 446, 455, 456, 

457. 

Shantle, , 259. 

Shantle Reversible Bottom Oven, 
259. 

Shaumberg, Capt., 16. 



INDEX 



573 



Shaw, George Bernard, xxxiii. 
Sheffield, xxix, 29, 33, 34, 36, 37, 

291, 305, 324, 352, 413, 414, 415, 

417, 457. 
Sheffield, England, 80, 163. 
Sheffield and Birmingham Coal, 

Iron, and Railroad Co., 324 n., 

417. 

Sheffield & Tuscumbia St. Rail- 
way Co., 417. 

Sheffield Coal & Iron Co., 33. 

Sheffield Coal, Iron, & Steel Co., 
425. 

Sheffield District, the, xxxiii, 36, 76, 

137, 151, 329, 346, 352. 
Sheffield Furnace Co., 415, 417. 
Sheffield Land, Iron, & Coal Co., 

414, 415, 417. 
Sheffield Pipe & Nail Works, 

417. 

Shelby, mentioned, 77, 80, 112, 128, 

194, 480, 505. 
Shelby Coal mines, 207. 
Shelby County, importance of, 40, 

51; early iron making in, 70; 

Horace Ware's work in, 76-81; 

isolation of, 122; coal supplied 

to Confederacy from, 149, 150; 

Giles Edwards in, 173, 176, 177; 

mentioned, 22, 35, 69, 71, 74, 75, 

82, 98, 143, 153, 157, 186, 295, 

297, 316, 324, 326, 328, 329, 353, 

457. 

Shelby Iron Co, establishment of, 
70; influence of Horace Ware 
on, 76; account of, 78-81; 
furnishes iron to Confederacy, 
144, 145 n. ; ownership of Mon- 
terallo property, 154; recon- 
structed, 176, 177, 187; destruc- 
tion of, 194; rebuilt, 195, 204; 
mentioned, 112, 147, 163, 186, 
187, 228, 238, 316, 339, 415, 
446, 472, 473, 474, 475, 480, 
505. 

Shelby Rolling Mill Co., the, 147, 
186. 

Shells, Aldrich collection of, 268. 

Shepard, A. K., 171 n. 

, Col. Alexander Knowles, 

connection with Brighthope fur- 
nace, 75, 169; biography of, 
170-173; mentioned, 324. 

, Seth, 170. 

Shepard & Moses, 93. 

Shepherd, James W., 501. 

Sherman, Gen. William Tecumseh, 
65, 125; destroys Noble foundry, 
185; mentioned, 317. 

Sherrill, Mrs. Jane, 28, 32. 

, "Bonny Kate," 373. 

, Uriah, 373. 



Sherrod, Benjamin, 37. 

, Hon. Wm. C, 418. 

Shields, J. B., 501. 

Shiloh, battle of, mentioned, 139, 
166, 235, 241, 296, 382. 

Shiloh National Military Commis- 
sion, the, 296. 

Shoals Creek, 23, 71, 74. 

Shook, Col. A. M., 360; alliance 
with T. T. Hillman, 361-362; 
quoted, 281, 285, 286, 291, 300, 
343, 344, 351, 364, 365, 367, 375, 
376, 377, 395, 397, 398, 411, 432, 
462, 463, 466; mentioned, 373, 
378, 379, 381, 382, 384, 388, 391, 
394, 400, 405, 423, 465. 

, G. A., 373. 

, J. A., 490. 

, Paschal, 428, 430, 462, 465. 

, Warner, 428, 429. 

Shook & Fletcher, 95. 

Short, James, 53. 

Shorter, Governor, 241. 

Shreeves, L. S. & T. T., furnace 

firm of, 211. 
Shropshire, England, 308. 
Silver Islet mine, Canada, 471. 
Simpson, Thatcher and Bartlett, 

358. 

Sinton, David, 261. 

Sioussat, Dr., xxiv. 

Sipsey Fork, 52, 488. 

Six Mile, 73, 75, 151. 

Six Mile Creek, 73, 172. 

Six Mile Ferry, Pa., 400, 401. 

Six Mile forge, the, 70. 

Slade, C. E., 284. 

Slaton, J. H., 340. 

Slave labor, employed by Moses 
Stroup, 66; by W. L. Goold, 68; 
by Horace Ware, 77. 

Sloat, H. R., 464. 

, Henry R., 468. 

Sloss, Fred, 288, 408. _ 

, Col. James Withers, impor- 
tance of, 21-23; his work for rail- 
roads, 104, 107; biography of, 
108 ; leaves Oxmoor plant, 200 ; 
plan to save the South and North 
R. R., 245, 249; forms partner- 
ship with T. H. Aldrich, 272-273; 
starts furnace company, 287-289 ; 
retires from business, 347-348; 
cited, 304; mentioned, xxx, 210, 
259, 260, 267, 274, 277, 279, 291, 
293, 294, 319, 331, 336, 338, 
340, 341, 342, 451, 453, 455, 
457. 

, Maclin, 288. 

Sloss City furnaces, 288, 300, 306; 

cost of iron making at, 304. 
Sloss Furnace Co., 22, 283, 339, 347, 



574 



INDEX 



348, 355, 452, 455; company 
formed, 288; its success, 289. 
Sloss Iron and Steel Co., 342, 439, 

451, 452, 457, 458, 459, 505, 525; 
history of, 347-353 ; becomes Sloss- 
Sheffield Steel and Iron Co., 353. 

Sloss Ore Mines, 348, 355. 

Sloss-Sheffield Steel & Iron Co., 
mentioned, 21, 22, 23, 33, 36, 
199, 200, 262 n., 288, 291, 293, 
347, 348, 351, 358, 412, 417, 451, 

452, 453, 457, 458, 473; Sloss Iron 
and Steel Co. changed to, 353. 

Smith, Abington, 73, 74. 

, Anthony, 137. 

, Arthur W., 284, 290, 293, 294, 

342, 449. 

Major Charles H., quoted, 311, 

314, 321. 

, D. L., 342. 

, Dan, 293. 

, Dr. Eugene A., state geologist, 

quoted, 29, 352; cited, 253, 268, 
324 n.; biography of, 264-265; 
mentioned, xxxiv, 182, 183, 428, 
489; quoted, 476 n., 502. 

, Flora Warren, xxiv. 

, J. Henry, 468. 

, Jonathan Newton, 46, 70, 73, 

74, 169, 173, 325; forge of, 46; 
importance of, 70; biography of, 
73 ; discovery of coal by, 74 ; in- 
terest in Brighthope furnace, 
169; nailery started by, 173. 

, Joseph R., 24, 45. 

, Dr. Lawrence, 284. 

, Matthew Thomas, 136, 137. 

, Milton H., mentioned, 112, 

138, 139, 210, 218, 245, 249, 276, 
288, 298, 310, 331, 336, 444 n., 
451, 465, 493, 494; quoted, 246, 
343; biography of, 278-282. 

, Norman W., 341. 

, Samuel Parrish, 264. 

, T. O., 46. 

, "Uncle Joe," 74. 

. Lieut. Walter, 17. 

Smith Co., 425. 

Smith Sons Gin and Machine Co., 
342. 

Smither, Samuel, 26. 

Smiths, the, 23. 

Smithson, Noble, 419. 

Smythe, Augustine T., quoted, 331; 

mentioned, 331, 332, 333, 335, 

340. 

Soapstone Bluff, 189. 
Socapatoy Road, 88. 
"Society Hill," S. C, 458. 
Solomon, William, 517. 
Somersville, 182. 
Songo mines, 212, 437, 490 n. 



Sons of St. George, 324. 

Soudan mine, 468, 471. 

South and North R. R., Sloss presi- 
dent of, 22; granting of charter 
for, 104-106; built by Gilmer, 
107, 121, 124; develops Cahaba 
field, 149; condition of, 164, 167; 
reconstruction of, 215, 216, 217, 
220, 221, 225, 227; acquired by 
Louisville & Nashville R. R., 243, 
244, 245, 247, 248, 249; comple- 
tion of, 251; failure of, 252, 260; 
mentioned, 111, 163, 206, 228, 241, 
261, 276, 277, 284, 348. 

South America, 297. 

South Carolina, mentioned, 34, 
40 n., 55, 56, 62, 64, 65, 71, 72, 
91, 101, 102, 123, 126, 163, 170, 
235, 239, 310, 319. 

South Carolina R. R., 312. 

South Chicago, 111., 486. 

South Florence, 30. 

South Highlands, 229. 

South Pittsburg, Tenn., 288, 289, 
305, 378, 382, 384, 389, 390, 391, 
443 n. 

South Pittsburg furnace, the, 302. 

Southern Baptist University of 
Memphis, Tennessee, An Act to 
incorporate the, 365. 

Southern Bridge Co., 228, 342. 

Southern Coal and Coke Co., 328. 

Southern Foundry and Manufac- 
turing Co., 342. 

Southern Iron & Steel Co., 228, 320, 
357, 441, 448, 449, 450, 451. 

Southern Mineral Land Co., 169, 
328. 

Southern Mining Co., 452. 
Southern Pacific R. R., 280, 297, 
523. 

Southern R. R. System, mentioned, 
105, 112, 150, 197, 297, 312, 314, 
350, 454, 465, 475, 492, 495, 496, 
502, 503. 

Southern States Coal, Iron, & Land 

Co., 378, 384, 385, 386, 388, 389, 

390, 391, 425. 
Southern Steel Co., 308, 444, 445, 

446, 447, 450, 451, 456, 457. 
Southwest Coal Co., 404, 422. 
Southwest Coal & Coke Co., 401, 

404. 

Southwest Georgia R. R., 117. 
Southwest Virginia district, the, 

302. 
Spain, xxvii. 
Spang, Edward, 82, 86. 
Spang Steel & Iron Co., 449. 
Spaniards, Hobuckintopa fortified 

by, 12. 
Spanish, the, xxvii. 



INDEX 



575 



Spanish War, 284, 473, 500. 
Sparrow, John, xxxi. 
Sparta, Georgia, 73. 
Spaulding mine, the, 46. 
Spencer, Samuel, 465. 
Spiegeleisen, first in U. S., 324 n. 
Spotswood, Alexander, 453. 
Sprayberry, Israel, 86. 
Springfield, Mass., 314. 
Spring Gap, 405, 472. 
Squaw Shoals, the, 48, 53, 54, 55, 
57. 

Squire, Joseph, early coal worker, 
151; quoted, 149, 150, 152-156, 
242; mentioned, 239, 241, 271, 
272, 274, 472, 474. 

Staffordshire, Eng., 355. 

Stahlman, , freight agent, 276. 

Stamp Creek, Ga., 65. 

Standard Coal Co., 473, 478, 479. 

Standard properties, 473. 

Standifer, Dr. , 261. 

Standiford, 160, 288. 

Stanley, Henry, 475 n. 

" Stanton House," the, 243. 

Stanton, John C, carpet bagger, 
216, 217, 296; agreement with 
Milner, 219, 220, 221; men- 
tioned, 225, 226, 243, 247. 

"Star Spangled Banner," the, 126. 

State Bank, incorporation of, 37. 

State National Bank, Memphis, 498. 

State Normal College, 418. 

Steamboats, introduction of, 35, 38. 

Steel, Charles, 517. 

Steele, Jonathan, 44, 48. 

Stein, Walter, 478. 

Steiner Bank, 227. 

Steiner Brothers, 503; ownership 
of Empire Coal Co., 227. 

Stephenson, George, 386. 

Stephenson & Co., 385. 

Sterling and Menifee R. R., 325. 

Stetson, E. G., 317. 

Steubenville, Ohio, 512. 

Stevens, Elbridge Gerry, 299. 

Stevenson, V. K., 243, 244, 248. 

Stewart County, Tenn., 256. 

Stimpson, J. W., 515. 

Stockdale, J. L., quoted, 83. 

Stockton & Darlington R. R., 386. 

Stockton mines, 412. 

Stockton-on-Tees, England, 142,385, 
387, 388. 

Stonewall, 314. 

Stonewall Iron Co., 317, 319. 

Storrs, Col. John S., president of 
Alabama Coal Mining Co., 153, 
154, 155. 

Stout, F. D., 515. 

Stowbridge, England, 66. 

Strausburger, Albert, 244. 



Streight's raid, in Cherokee County, 
183. 

Strong, James E., 356, 449, 450, 
451. 

Strother, Elizabeth, 204. 
Strother furnaces, 165, 205, 206. 
Stroup, Alonzo, 168. 

, Andrew Moses, 168. 

, David, 22, 64. 

, Henry, 168. 

, Jacob, 21, 64; builds Cane 

Creek Iron Works, 75, 91. 

, Jacob D., Jr., 64 n., 90 n. 

, Moses, son of Jacob Stroup, 22 ; 

biography of, 64, 65; quoted, 66, 
67; old furnaces built by, 160; 
management of Red Mountain 
Iron & Coal Co., 163; manage- 
ment of Oxmoor plant, 167, 168 ; 
mentioned, 138, 485. 

Stubbs, Prof. W. C, 265. 

Stucky, Stephen, 288, 317, 320. 

Sturdevant, Matthew P., 13. 

Sullivan, John, 54, 211. 

Summerfield high school, the, 294. 

Summerfield road, 188, 189, 192, 
193. 

Summers, Dr. William, 82. 
Sumter County, Tenn., 374. 
Sun, The, 232. 
Sunflower Bend, the, 147. 

Swank, , quoted, 175, 176. 

Swann, Mr., 463. 

Swedish iron, 3, 97. 

Sydenham, England, exposition at, 

71, 184. 
Sylacauga, 323. 

Taft, Charles P., 261 n. 

, Robert, 268. 

, William Howard, President, 

xxix, 268. 
Taggart, J. K, 399. 
Talbot, Benjamin, 428, 429, 430, 

434. 

Talladega, mentioned, 21, 25, 75, 

82, 83, 87, 88, 90, 93, 150, 178, 
180, 183, 310, 316. 

Talladega County, early iron busi- 
ness of, 26; interest in, 40; 
making of iron blooms, 70; iron 
works in, before war, 82; Salt 
Creek Iron Works erected in, 
90, 178; isolation of, 122; iron 
making under the Confederacy, 
157; mentioned, 71, 79, 89, 98, 
180, 186, 309, 320, 322, 328, 
476 n., 480. 

Talladega Creek, mentioned, 82, 

83, 84, 86, 87, 88, 90. 
Talladega furnace, the, 320, 323. 
Talladega Reporter, The, 83. 



576 



INDEX 



Tallahatchie River, the, 165. 

Tallapoosa County, 90, 452. 

Tallapoosa River, the, 3. 

Tallassahatchee Creek, 92. 

Tallassee, 147. 

Tallman, A. P., 510. 

• , James, 510. 

Tamaqua, Pa., 175. 

Tannehill, James, 62. 

, Col. Ninion, 62, 66, 160. 

■ , Philip, 62. 

, William W., quoted, 62. 

Tannehill forge, 285. 

Tannehill furnace, once owned by 
Moses Stroup, 22; ruins of, 67; 
bought by Wm. L. Saunders & 
Co., 158; operation and de- 
struction of, 159, 194; men- 
tioned, 72, 76, 159, 161, 163, 168, 
169, 186, 194, 210, 211, 229, 230, 
334, 353, 356, 490 n. 

Tannehill House, 160. 

Tarr, Pa., 404. 

Tarrant family, the, 42. 

Tarrant, Mrs. , biographer of 

Daniel Pratt, quoted, 238. 

Tate, Col. Sam, mentioned, 38, 
138, 210, 211, 285; contract to 
furnish North & South R. R., 
217, 218, 225; mentioned, 222, 
233, 247, 248, 249, 260, 287, 374, 
529. 

, Sam, Jr., quoted, 210. 

, Thomas S., son of Sam, 

Mayor of Birmingham, 233. 
Taylor, Moses, 445. 
■ , Gen. Richard, 138, 191, 192, 

204. 

, Pres. Zachary, 126, 204. 

Taylor Hotel, the, 46. 

Tecumseh, quoted, 5; 13. 

Tecumseh furnace, the, 302, 319. 

Tecumseh Iron Co., history of, 317- 
318; mentioned, 316, 339. 

Tees Battle Co., 387. 

Temple, N. H., 162. 

Ten Island ford, the, 181, 182. 

Tennessee, mentioned, xxviii, 24, 
26, 80, 89, 106, 117, 122, 123, 
128, 130, 138, 139, 147, 159, 164, 
166 n., 169, 170, 173, 175, 176, 
177, 182, 183, 184, 189, 207, 210, 
211, 256, 262, 287, 290, 302, 305, 
308, 311, 318, 331, 484, 489, 490, 
490 n., 491, 495; relation of 
Tennessee Co. to, 362; dis- 
covery of coal in, 363, 364 n. 

Tennessee & Coosa R. R., 108. 

Tennessee bar iron, 286. 

Tennessee Coal, Iron & R. R. Co., 
present holdings of, 11, 21-23, 
42, 46, 155, 160, 161, 173, 187, 



200, 228, 274, 296, 297, 336, 348; 
advent into Alabama, 360-393; 
incorporation of, 368-370; origi- 
nal coke furnace, 376; acqui- 
sition of Southern States Co., 
390; founding of Ensley, 395; 
appointment of Erskine Ramsay, 
397-405; manufacture of Hen- 
derson steel, 407-411; Ensley 
furnaces, 411; acquisition of 
DeBardeleben and Cahaba Cos., 
423; making of basic iron, 424, 
431, 433-435; panic of '93, 425; 
steel casting, 463-467, 508; 
Topping-Crockard administration, 
515; purchase of, by U. S. Steel 
Corporation, 517-524, 527, 533; 
present organization of, 527; 
list of former presidents, 528, 
529; water supply, 530-532; 
mentioned, xxxi, 61, 207, 228, 
263, 285, 289, 290, 291, 292, 293, 
294, 305, 306, 307, 332, 338, 342, 
349, 358, 359, 365, 372, 373, 374, 
375, 379, 380, 382, 383, 386, 394, 
406, 412, 417, 422, 426, 427, 428, 
429, 430, 432, 443 n., 456, 457, 
461, 462, 468, 469, 472, 473, 478, 
490, 492, 493, 494, 495, 507, 509, 
510, 511, 513, 514, 516. 

Tennessee Co. ore mines, 471. 

Tennessee Constitutional Conven- 
tion, 421. 

Tennessee Historical Society, 364. 

Tennessee Iron Works, 135. 

Tennessee Mts., 495. 

"Tennessee Republic Co., The," 
511. 

Tennessee River, mentioned, 36, 
45, 108, 109, 187, 305, 364 n., 
389. 

Tennessee River district, the, 302. 
Tennessee Rolling Mills, 210, 257. 
Tennessee, the ironclad, 140, 145, 
177. 

Tennessee Valley, 36. 

Tensaw County, 17. 

Terre Haute, Ind., 382. 

Texas, mentioned, 63, 76, 91, 235, 

306, 307, 320, 328, 329. 
Texas & Pacific R. R., 421. 
Thach, Charles C, 130. 
Thomas, xxix, 41, 42, 353, 354, 

355, 357, 358. 
Thomas, David, 175, 212, 313, 353, 

355. 

, Edwin, son of Thomas, 

212, 353. 

, E. J., Jr., 453. 

, Gen. George H., 125; in attack 

on Selma, 189. 
, Hopkins, 175. 



INDEX 



577 



Thomas, James, connection with 

Irondale furnaces, 199, 200, 257, 

261 ; mentioned, 292. 

, John, 175. 

, Peter B., 295, 452. 

, Robert, 70, 75, 80. # 

, Samuel, son of David, 42, 175, 

212, 353, 354, 355, 356, 357, 473, 

474, 476. 

, W. R., 262, 263. 

Thomas family, the, 46, 175, 229, 

299. 

Thomas Iron Co., 354. 
Thomasson, Major T. S., 377. 
Thompson, Alexis W., 447 ; quoted, 
358. 

, B. A., 342. 

, J. O., 446. 

, Julius, 151. 

, Lewis, 151. 

, Noah H., 151, 172. 

, W. A., 57. 

, W. H., 150, 151. 

Thompson seam, the, 150, 151. 
Thompsons Mill forge, the, 70, 71, 
74. 

Thornaby iron works, 385, 390. 
Thorne, Oakleigh, 445, 515. 
Thornton, George P., 449. 
Three Rivers Coal and Iron Co., 341. 
Tickenor, Rev. I. T., 156. 
Ticknor, Esther, wife of Daniel 

Pratt, 162. 
Titus, Hon. James, 233. 
Togo mine, 493. 
Tohopeka, 21. 
Tombecbe, see Tombigbee. 
Tombigbee District, the, 5, 13. 
Tombigbee River, the, xxxiv, 3, 

5, 9, 14, 16, 147. 
Tombikibi, see Tombigbee. 
Tomlinson, J. W., 340. 
Tompkins, H. B., 414. 
Took-au-bat-che, old Indian town 

of, 3. 

Topping, Henry, 510. 
, John A., 357, 358, 359, 509, 

510, 511, 515, 524, 529. 
Townley Mining Co., 489, 493, 496. 
Tracy, Benjamin F., 468. 

, Samuel F., 364, 365, 368, 528. 

Tracy City, 305, 366, 367, 370, 371, 

375, 376, 377, 378; coal mines, 

379, 380, 382, 388, 391, 392. 
Tracy City branch of the Nashville, 

Chattanooga, & St. Louis R. R., 

365. 

Tracy City District, 495. 
Tracy City mines, 489. 
Tredegar Iron Works, 137, 140 n., 

145 355 1 
Trenton, N. J., 210, 410. 

37 



Trigg County, Ky., 286. 
Trimble, N. W., 317, 501; biogra- 
phy of, 318. 

, Richard, 517. 

, Thomas Clarke, 318. 

Troy, 203. 

Troy, N. Y., 101, 267. 
Troy, Alexander, 203. 
, Daniel, 60. 

, Col. Daniel Shipman, biog- 
raphy of, 203, 204; president 
Eureka Mining & Transportation 
Co., 255, 256, 259; mentioned, 
238. 
Trussville, 52. 
Tubingen, 525. 
Tuggle, James, 53. 
Tuomey, Michael, appointed first 
State geologist, 100; biography 
of, 100-103; quoted, 31, 49, 66, 
75, 83, 87, 95, 96; mentioned, 
55, 69, 72, 73, 104, 105, 107, 112, 
113 n., 157, 207, 222 n., 264, 267, 
440, 501. 

, Thomas, 101. 

Tuck-a-league Shoals, 93. . 
Tupelo, Miss., 166. 
Turkey Creek, 48, 164. 
Turner, James, 22, 52. 

, Mathias, 21, 22, 52. 

, Robert, incident cited by, 

180, 181. 

Tuscumbia, 26, 36, 37, 118, 413, 
417. 

Tuskaloosa, 502. 

Tuskaloosa, coal fields of, 11; 
capital at, 47, 58; mentioned, 
13, 34, 42, 44, 53, 54, 56, 57, 61, 
64, 68, 72, 91, 102, 148, 158, 207, 
208, 213, 224, 253, 272, 333, 
337. 

Tuskaloosa, Chief, 10; meets De 

Soto, 18. 
Tuskaloosa Bank, 448. 
Tuskaloosa County, Moses Stroup 
in, 22 ; interest in, 40 ; erection of 
Old Tannehill in, 58; building 
Stroup's furnaces, 66, 67; coal 
in, 68, 69, 70; isolation of, 122; 
coal supplied Confederacy by, 
149; iron making under Con- 
federacy, 157, 158; mentioned, 
52, 55, 62, 98, 170, 186, 297, 353, 
478, 489, 490 n., 499. 
Tuskaloosa mines, 503. 
Tuskaloosa Mining & Transporta- 
tion Co., 253. 
Tuskaloosa trail, the, 23. 
Tuskegee, Indian village, 7; men- 
tioned, 293. 
Tutwiler Coal, Coke & Iron Co., the, 
21, 436, 439, 457. 



578 



INDEX 



Tutwiler, Edward Magruder, 21, 
349, 437, 451, 457. 

, Henry, 439. 

■ , Miss Julia, 439. 

, Martin, 21, 439. 

, Col. Thomas H., 439. 

Tyler, Alfred L., 295, 310, 312, 313, 
315, 476. 

, Annie, 315. 

, B. F., 449, 513. 

, Gen. Daniel, builds Wood- 
stock group, 179, 185, 313-314; 
biography of, 312-313; death and 
character of, 315; mentioned, 310. 

, E. L., 310. 

Tylers, the, 315, 321. 

Tyne Chemical Co., 387. 

Ullabee Indians, 90. 

Underwood, Eugene, 308. 

, Joseph Rogers, 21, 308. 

, Oscar W., 21, 308. 

■ , William Thompson, 21, 263, 

274, 284, 290, 331, 341 ; partner- 
ship with DeBardeleben, 306- 
307 ; early years, 308, 443, 444, 
456. 

Underwood family, the, 308. 
Underwood seam, the, 296. 
Union Iron Works, San Fran., 482. 
Union Pacific R. R., 523. 
United States Bank, 59. 
United States Cast Iron Pipe & 

Foundry Co., 441. 
United States Census, the, 301 n. 
United States Rolling Stock Co., 

419. 

United States Steel Corporation, 
xxxi, 274, 290, 342, 359, 362, 
376, 391, 425, 469, 510, 526, 527, 
its purchase of Tennessee Com- 
pany property, 517-524. 

University of Alabama, the, men- 
tioned, 34, 38, 51, 58, 68, 100, 
102, 130, 169, 207, 208, 264. 

University of Goettingen, 264. 

University of Heidelberg, 264. 

University of Illinois, 228. 

University of Knoxville, 379. 

University of the South, Sewanee, 
Tenn., xxiv, 207, 362, 367, 371. 

University of Virginia, 336. 

Upper Thompson coal mine, 151. 

Upstill, Emmet A., 404. 

Upton, Maj. Gen. E., in attack on 
Selma, 190, 192, 193, 194. 

Urban, H. M., 528. 

Valley Creek, 188, 192, 194. 
Valley Forge, Penn., 59, 210. 
Valley Forge Bibb Co., 60. 
Van Camp, Cortlandt, 445. 



Van Cortlandt, Moses, 453. 

, Robert B., 445, 447. 

Van Hoose, Col. James M., 34. 

, Jesse, 34, 55, 502. 

Van Leer, W. A., 211. 

Van Lier furnace, 417. 

Vanlier, Samuel, 96. 

Vanderbilt, Cornelius, 447. 

Van Rensselaer Polytechnic Insti- 
tute, 101, 267, 269. 

Vance, J. N., 299. 

Vann, Dr., 408. 

Veitch, George, 342. 

, John, mentioned, 136, 148, 

259, 262, 263, 284, 288. 

, John, Jr., 136, 137. 

, William, 342. 

Venice, Italy, 251. 

Venison Creek, 531. 

Vera Cruz, siege of, 125. 

Vermillion ore range, 468, 470, 
471. 

Vermont, 75. 

Vernon, 97, 158. 

Versailles, 526. 

Verterville, Scotland, 68. 

Vicksburg, Tenn., 136, 189; siege 
of, 296. 

Victor mines, 503. 

Victoria, 378, 391. 

Victoria furnace, the, 302. 

Vienna Exposition, the, 71. 

Village Creek, mentioned, 42, 48, 
49, 219, 220, 354, 409, 411, 530, 
534. 

Virginia, mentioned, 34, 57, 68, 
101, 102, 128, 130, 137, 145, 168, 
305, 484. 

Virginia & Alabama Mining Co., 

324 n., 339. 
Virginia Coal & Iron Co., 451. 
Virginia Military Institute, 316, 

338. 

Vittur, Nev., 409. 

W. B. Wood Furnace Co., 418. 
Wade, 356. 

Wadsworth, Frank L., 250, 287, 
306. 

, J. B., 479. 

Wadsworth coal seam, the, 250. 
Wagner, Mayor C. G., 207. 
Wake County, N. C, 138. 
Walden's Ridge, 378. 
Waldo, 86. 
Wales, 292, 355. 
Walker, L. P., 100. 

, Richard B., 61. 

, Tandy, 13, 14. 

, Judge Thomas A., 119, 173. 

, William A., 45, 396. 

Walker County, interest in, 40; 



INDEX 



579 



settlement of, 52-57; coal sup- 
plied Confederacy by, 149 ; men- 
tioned, 22, 48, 51, 58, 70, 98, 
157, 236, 324 n., 352, 414, 488, 
490, 491, 493, 495, 496, 498, 499, 
500, 501, 502, 503, 504. 

Walker County Coal Co., 451. 

Walker's Prairie, 14. 

Wall Street Daily News, 482. 

Wallace, Maj. Campbell, 221, 222. 

War Department, Records of, 125 n. 

War of the Revolution, the, 6, 
239. 

War of 1812, 2, 5, 21, 65, 107, 136. 
Ward, Capt. E. B., 238. 

, Jenifer, see Mrs. Jenifer Ward 

Noble. 

, Thomas C, 284, 355. 

Ware, Henry H., 177. 

, Capt. H. E., 135. 

, Horace, importance of, 70; 

influence on Shelby County, 76; 
biography, 76-81; quoted, 99, 
163 ; sells interest in Shelby mines, 
177; buys Jenifer furnace, 179; 
manufactures iron in Texas, 
328-329; mentioned, 112, 143, 
147, 162, 165, 316, 413, 415, 472, 
474, 476 n., 481. 

, Mrs. Horace, nee Mary Harris, 

77. 

, John E., xxiv; quoted, 64, 77, 

99, 177, 185, 322, 323, 375 n.; 

biography of, 316; mentioned, 

90 n., 145, 474, 476 n. 
, Jonathan, father of Horace 

Ware, 70, 71, 74, 76, 184. 

, R. D., 202. 

Ware furnace, 328. 
Ware slope, 472. 
Warner, 358. 

Warner, James C, 262, 263, 289, 

338, 374, 375, 376, 378, 381, 384, 

388, 391, 397, 529. 
, Gen. Williard, 217,310; cited, 

302; biography of, 317-318. 
Warnock, Robert, 340. 
Warrior, 236, 252. 
Warrior Basin, 499. 
Warrior coal mines, Nes., 292, 356. 
Warrior Field, the, 69, 260, 271, 

272, 273, 274, 334, 488, 490, 492, 

493, 494, 500, 514. 
Warrior River, the, mentioned, 9, 

13, 43, 44, 48, 50, 51, 53, 54, 58, 

213, 224, 229, 488, 489, 496. 
Warrior Station, 252. 
Washington, 99, 264. 
Washington County, 5, 36. 
Washington County, Term., 485. 
Washington, D. C, 126, 217, 237. 
Washington, George, visited by 



Chief Pushmataha, 5; Benjamin 

Hawkins on staff of, 6. 
Washington Life Insurance Co., 445. 
Washington Post, the, 326. 
Washington Works, 135. 
Watervliet Arsenal, N. Y., 125. 
Watkins, Daniel, 45. 
Watlington, H. L., 341. 

Watson, Dr. , 74, 257. 

Watt, E. H., 331. 

Watts, Florence, wife of Col. Troy, 
203. 

, Gov. Thomas H., 203. 

Watts Coal and Coke Co., 340. 
Watts Coal and Iron Co., 341. 
Waxahatchee Shoals, 93. 
Weakley, Samuel D., 418. 
Weatherford, William, half-breed 

chief, 19; surrender of, 20, 22, 

26; mentioned 223, 239. 
Weatherly, J. A., 90 n., 94. 

, Squire, quoted, 94. 

, Mrs. James, 438 n. 

Weaver, Phil, 153, 154. 

Weduska Shoals, 92, 93. 

Weeden, John, in Oxford Iron Co., 

179. 

Weimer Engine & Machine Co., 411. 
Weisel, James, 357. 
Weiser, Oliver, 342. 
Welch, Mary, quoted, 16. 
Wellman, C. H., 466. 
Wells, Aaron, 30. 
Wesson, Miss., 98. 
Wesson, A. G., 475 n. 

, Rev. Anson, 6; quoted, 13. 

, G. W., 407, 410. 

West Carbon mines, 503. 

West Chester, Pa., 269. 

West Indies, the, 297, 298. 

West Point, Ga., 233, 246. 

West Point Military Academy, 125, 

127, 129, 312. 
West Red Mountain, 354. 
West Troy, N. Y., 142. 
West Virginia, 147, 300, 418. 
Western & Atlantic R. R., 65. 
Westmoreland, 403. 
Westmoreland Coal Co., 399. 
Westmoreland County, Pa., 401. 
Weston furnace, 158. 
Weston, Joseph, 158. 
Wetherbee, Thomas, 289. 
Wetmore, Daniel W., 475 n. 
Wetumpka, mentioned, 69, 83, 86, 

88, 92, 93, 147. 
Whatley, J. W., 513, 528. 

Wheeler, Gen. , 172. 

, George D., 84, 86. 

Wheeling, West Va., 147, 299, 300, 

418, 512. 

Wheeling Iron and Nail Works, 300. 



580 



INDEX 



Wheelock Engine Co., Worcester, 

Mass., 483. 
Whelen, Edith Ashley, 484. 
Whim coal pit, the, 154. 
White, Fleming B., 25. 

, Col. James L., 136. 

, W. S., 26. 

White Oak Creek, Tenn., 256. 
Whitehead, John, 155. 
Whiteside, James A., 175. 
Whitewater Valley R. R., 326. 
Whitfield, Bryan, 501. 
, Gus, 501. 

Whiting, John, president of South 
& North R. R., 216, 217. 

Whitson, William, 53. 

Whitthorne, W. C, 369. 

Whitwell, Thomas, 142, 262, 288, 
289, 331, 378, 385, 386, 387, 388, 
390. 

Whitwell Company, the, 289. 
Whitwell stoves, introduced in U. S., 

288, 289. 
Whitworth, Judge James 374. 

, J. S., 529. 

Wickes, M. J., 202. 
Wicks, Moses, 374. 
— — , Moses J., 170, 529. 
Wier bloomery, the, 70. 
Wilbraham, Mass., 170. 
Wilbur, E., 229. 
Wilcox, 150. 

Wilder, Gen. John J., 355. 

Wiley, , 65. 

, Henry W., 364 n. 

— — , M. C, in Oxford Iron Co., 179. 

Wilkesbarre, Pa., 153. 

Wilkinson, General, 6; establishes 
trading post at Fort St. Stephens, 
12, 13; opens up Mobile, 15, 20. 

Williams, Alberta, 475. 

, E. P., 528. 

, George, 355. 

, Mary Fontain, wife of Col. 

Shepard, 170. 

, Thomas Lightfoot, 158, 159. 

Williams Coal property, 446. 

Williamson, C. P., 284, 298, biog- 
raphy of, 299. 

Williamson furnace, 263. 

Williamson Furnace Co., 283, 284, 
285, 340. 

Williamson Iron Co., 298. 

"Willis J. Milner," the locomotive, 
164, 322. 

Will's Valley, 446. 

Wills Valley R. R., the fifth rail- 
road in Alabama, 38, 374. 

Wilson, Arthur Owen, 299. 

, Augusta Evans, 407. 

, Brice, 30, 34. 

, Charles, E., quoted, 28, 30, 33. 



Wilson, Henry F., 407, 408, 410. 

, Maj. James H., in attack on 

Selma, 181, 189, 190, 192, 193. 
, R. T., 447. 

, Samuel Greene, 169; quoted 

170, 172. 

, Willard, 513, 528. 

Wilsons Creek, 71, 97. 
Wilsons Creek forge, the, 70. 
Wilson's Raid, mentioned, 69, 76, 

89, 143, 173, 177, 179, 181, 195, 

196. 

Winchendon, Mass., 98. 
Winchester, 373. 
Windham County, Conn., 312. 
Windom, N. Y., 139. 
Winslow, Mr., 409. 

, F. B., 528. 

, Gen. E. F., 135. 

Winston, Anthony, 27. 

, Governor, 104, 107. 

, John W., 100. 

Winston County, 56, 414, 489. 

Wisinger, , 74. 

Witherbee, Frank S., 468. 
Witherby, Ed. T., T45 n. 
Witherow & Gordon, 411. 
Wolf Creek, 52, 53, 55, 489. 
Wolf Den Hollow mine, 236. 
Wood, Charles W., 299, 342. 
, John, 42. 

, William, partner of D. Hill- 
man, 211. 

, William Basil, 418. 

Wood coal pit, the, 154. 
Woodlawn, 41. 

Woods, Judge W. B., 317, 318. 

Woods coal pits, the, 153. 

Woods Station, 42. 

Woodson, C. D., 416. 

, Charles, partner of "Billy" 

Goold, 69; in Oxford Iron Co., 

179. 

, Fred, partner of "Billy" 

Goold, 69; in Oxford Iron Co., 
179. 

Woodson Coal Mines, 150. 
Woodstock (see Anniston), 314, 
315. 

Woodstock, mentioned, 296, 297, 
458; Edwards furnace at, 197, 
230. 

Woodstock group, built by S. Noble 

and D. Tyler, 179, 185. 
Woodstock Iron Co., formation of, 

185, 310, 313-314; 475, 477; 

mentioned, 315, 316, 321, 324 n., 

339. 

Woodstock Iron and Steel Corpora- 
tion, 324 n. 
Woodstock seam, the, 296. 
Woodward, xxix, 41, 45, 301. 



INDEX 



581 



Woodward, Gen. , 40 n. 

, J. H., 299, 301, 348. 

, James T., 431, 447, 464, 465, 

468. 

, W. H., 299, 300. 

Woodward holdings, 532. 

Woodward Iron Co., blast furnaces 
of, 45; history of, 299-301 ; men- 
tioned, 283, 284, 337, 339, 348, 
358, 437, 473, 494. 

Wooten Bank, 366. 

Wooten, Benjamin, 363, 364 n. 

Worthington, B. P., 222. 

, J. W., 297, 417. 

, J. W. & Co., 23. 

, Thomas, 405. 

Worthington coal mines, 260. 

Wright & Rice Foundry, 417. 

Wiirtemberg, Germany, 147; duke 
of, 525. 

Wurts, William, 319. 

Wuth, Dr., 256. 



Wuthenow, William, 513. 

Wyeth, John Allen, quoted, 26; 

his "Life of Forrest," 383, 384. 
Wylam, 531, 532. 
Wyllie, C. C, 331. 

Yale University, 98, 101, 328. 
Yates, Belle Sumter. See Roberts, 

Mrs. David. 
Yazoo River, Miss., 225. 
Yolande Co., 500. 

Yolande Coal & Coke Co., 489, 

499. 
York, 413. 

York family, the, 42. 
York's Bluff, 413. 
Yorkshire, England, 101, 301. 
Youngstown mine, Mich., 471. 
Youngstown Steel Co., 449. 



Zimmerman, Eugene, 310, 320. 



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